Niagara Falls city council wants to ban jet boats in Canadian waters

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People around Niagara Falls never thought it would happen, but a Youngstown, New York jet boat company wants to take passengers up through the treacherous whirlpool rapids. Niagara Jet Adventures is already taking passengers up to the whirlpool, but now Niagara Falls city council is appealing to the federal government to ban the boats in Canadian waters.

Niagara Jet Adventures already does white water tours in large rapids in Idaho. The plan for the Niagara River is to have people covered and belted in. They’ve already done a dozen trial runs in the lower rapids.

Niagara Falls fire chief Lee Smith says the rapids are fast and treacherous. There is protruding rock and floating debris. He says rescuing somebody here would be impossible.

“Anyone who has an issue on the river that runs into trouble will be well past that area by the time we can get down to the bottom because it happens so quickly.”

In 1975 a river rafting company wanted to carry paying passengers through the whirlpool rapids. To prove it was safe it ran ten trial runs. On the tenth run the raft flipped killing three people.

The Niagara Jet Adventures boat is certainly not a raft. It has a lot of safety features but even it can’t ride up a class six wave. That’s why it needs to travel on the Canadian side of the river because it’s smoother and people can look at the view.

Niagara Falls council is applying to Transport Canada to stop boats from travelling into the rapids.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this post incorrectly spelled Mr Smith’s name.