You have to be realistic and look beyond your 20 acre dive site. Lake Pleasant is a big lake with serious safely issues-especially on weekends. You can talk education and enforcement all you want but despite all the ad campaigns and public awareness, alcohol and boating continue to exist and still be a huge problem. The majority of fatalities that occur are a result of alcohol, speed and stupidity. I have yet to hear about a single diver killed or injured at Pleasant due to a dive flag violation. The LEOs dont have the time to cruise around the lake looking to find out where the divers might be just so they can enforce a vague dive flag requirement. They dont even have enough presence to enforce the current laws being regularily broken than have provento produce injuries/fatalities.
IMO any campaign to demand greater safety in this regard will only hurt divers in the long term. Currently, we have more access to dive than probably any other users out there. Several areas of the lake are already closed to boaters, fisherman and even more areas to skiers. Divers can pretty much dive wherever they can get to with exception of a few private or closed areas. If divers are successful in convincing the bureaucrats that there is a serious safety problem requiring law enforcement action, it is more realistic to presume they will reduce or completely eliminate access to divers so they have one less problem to worry about. We are not enough numerically to matter. Honestly, up to this point I have been surprised that they have not already limited diving to a single area.
We need to remember that the lake access for diving is not a right. The lake is controlled by the Maricopa Water District. They have no other obligation but to manage the water supply, primarily for irrigation. The west side of the lake is managed by the county parks dept. (incidentally, the county park side is actually privately owned but leased to the county on a long term basis). The county can provide or limit access to whoever they want when operating in the publics interest. They dont owe us a dive site and they can sure take it away if they determine that it is not a safe activity that can be adequately managed.
Finally, the five flag requirement as I read it in the revised statue is ambiguous. Other than requiring one it does not indicate specific safety distances for divers or boaters alike. ARS Title 5, Chapter 5, Article 6, 5-362 says "A red flag with white diagonal stripe from staffhead to opposite corner shall be recognized as a diver flag and shall be displayed when a person or persons are actually diving below the water surface and are equipped with apparatus to allow such person or persons to breathe under water." The Arizona Boaters Guide" (AZ game and fish) goes a little further to suggest that boats stay 100 yards from a dive flag, however, they do not mandate any distance.
Based on this language, enforcement is almost impossible unless the LEO can site reckless endangerment, which is a whole different rule section. Furthermore, the language of the statute applies the only burden for compliance on the diver. This in itself is another reason to avoid calling attention to enforcement. Because the way I read it the only act of compliance that I can see as enforceable is that the diver has one. That opens up a whole can of worms in interpretation about how many divers to a flag, how far can you dive from your flag, etc?
I feel that we have a good situation that is reasonably innocuous if we use common sense in our site selection and practice safe diving techniques and navigation. To invite more regulatory awareness to our activity can only put our sport it at risk in my opinion.
'bob
