Park Service could upgrade inner tube to river 'vessel' status

VAN BUREN, Mo. -- Owners of businesses that rent equipment for floating on some of southern Missouri's rivers are keeping wary watch on a proposed change in a National Park Service rule.

The revision would upgrade the lowly inner tube to "vessel" status, meaning those who go tubing on the Current and Jacks Fork rivers in the Ozark National Scenic Riverways would have to take along personal flotation devices, and children under 12 would have to wear them.

Public comment on the proposed change in rules for boating in the Park Service's waterways is being accepted until Dec. 24, and there's likely to be plenty of it from Missouri.

"I think it's outrageous," said Rhonda Corbett, proprietor of Big Spring Canoe and Tube Rental in Van Buren. "I don't see how that is legally possible" when tubes are not approved by the Coast Guard anyway.

Seeing her 600 inner tubes turned into vessels and having to buy 600 personal flotation devices and hand them out to customers who might not use them would be a headache financially and wouldn't improve safety, Corbett contends.

"It would be so financially disastrous to the business owners in this area," she said. "It would be unfeasible for me to rent inner tubes anymore."

Although Park Service rules have changed piecemeal since the 1980s, the agency decided a review was needed because of changing use of rivers, lakes and ocean parks, riverway spokesman William Beteto said.

'Technology has changed'That's particularly true of the Current and the lower Jacks Fork, where tubing rivals canoeing as a recreational activity, he said.

"Technology has changed," he said. "There are new types of motors, and there are changes in what people use. In the riverways, for example, tubing has increased."

Because tubing isn't nearly as popular on the Buffalo River, Buffalo National River chief ranger Robert Maguire said he doesn't anticipate problems if the new rules are adopted.

"The difference in the two parks is the Ozark is fed by more underground springs, so that it has more water in July and August, and tubing is a hot weather activity," he said.

Conditions are friendlier on the Current River at Eminence and Van Buren, where many concessioners include canoeing and tubing in their names.

Big Spring River Camp owner John Kadiva said he had asked Ozark Riverways for data on the safety record of tubing but learned no records are available.