Lifeguard Shortage Means Some NYC Ocean Beaches Will Still Have to Close This Summer
The number of city lifeguards will be up this season, but a top city official conceded this week that the numbers will fall short of the 1,500 needed to keep all 14 miles of the city’s ocean beaches fully staffed.
The city’s beaches at Rockaway Beach, Coney Island and City Island are scheduled opened for the season on May 25 for the Memorial Day weekend but an ongoing lifeguard shortage that Mayor Eric Adams calls a national “crisis” will mean some of the city’s 14 miles of beachfront will not be open to swimming, city officials warned.
“This crisis is not going away and we need to deal with this,” said Mayor Eric Adams at his weekly press briefing on May 21.
On May 24, he announced he had reached an agreement with the lifeguards union that will relax some of the testing strict testing standards for pool lifeguard knocked out a provision to complete a 300 yard swim in a set time. But the relaxed standard is likely too late to alleviate the problem this season. Public pools open in a month on June 27.
“Some beaches that will have shortened hours or may not even be able to have a full complement because we have a life, a national lifeguard problem that we’re trying to resolve here in the city.”
The city needs about 1,500 lifeguards to fully staff all ocean beaches and outdoor swimming pools and are likely to be several hundred short of that number.
Lifeguard numbers are slowly improving, however. Deputy Mayor Meer Joshi said that 560 first time test takers people passed the lifeguard test this year, which is up from 375 first time test passers a year ago. But passing the rigorous swim test is only a first step. Subsequent training is still needed in CPR, first aid and rescue techniques that have to be completed before the lifeguards can hit the beaches. And the total number of returning lifeguards is not fully known yet, Joshi said.
“We are confident that we will end up with a total number that is larger this year than we had last year,” said Joshi.
“There will be still some segments of the beach that are closed for two reasons. One lifeguard shortage, because ideally we want over a thousand lifeguards and we don’t anticipate getting to quite those optimal levels. The second is there will be some Army Corps work that happens for a short period of time this summer that will result in some beach closures.
“Ideally, we’d love to have 1,500, but I doubt that we’ll get close to that,” Joshi said.
Last year, due to the ongoing shortage, only one city pool in Manhattan was able to offer a kids Learn to Swim program.
“We are confident that we will be higher than we were last year,” Meera said. “And we will be continuing our learn to swim programs.” But she stopped short of saying they’d be back at all pools in Manhattan.
The evening adult lap swim program and adult swimming lessons were scrapped entirely in recent years due to the lifeguard shortage. NYC Parks & Recreation officials had not responded to a query by presstime regarding whether those program could be restored given the current staffing levels.
While the city’s eight beaches open this weekend, the city’s outdoor swimming pools don’t open until late June after the city’s public schools adjourn for the summer.