DNR lacks authority to close Cedar River to swimmers

Fannie Schlabach of Kalona, whose 16-year-old son Merwyn drowned in the Cedar River at Palisades-Kepler State Park in 2002, said she thinks the state ought to “fence the place off from the public” or at least post more and larger warning signs.

So does Kujtime Ajro, 29, of Cedar Rapids, who helped rescue two young boys who were saved from drowning Sunday by Jonathan Jones of Lisbon, whose heroic effort cost him his life.

“Oh, my heart aches for (Jones') family,” said Schlabach, whose son drowned July 7, 2002, in eerily similar circumstances as he tried to rescue a friend who had stepped from shallow water off a dropoff into unseen swift currents. The friend, 19-year-old Norman Kauffman of Kalona, also drowned.

Although warning signs had been posted along the river, Schlabach said her family, on its first visit to Palisades-Kepler, did not see them. “We had no idea the place was so dangerous, that it had unknown powers,” she said.

Nor did Ajro, who said the beach area in which Sunday's drowning occurred looked “very inviting.”

Ajro, a friend of the boys' mother, said the boys, whose ages she estimated as 6 and 9, were wading knee-deep near the shore when they suddenly fell into deep water.

Jones, 41, who had been fishing from the bank with his children, immediately jumped into the river and rescued the boys but perished himself, becoming at least the 20th drowning victim at Palisades-Kepler in the past 50 years.

Ajro declined to identify her friend, whose family, she said, has been severely traumatized by the incident.

Col. John Stuelke, chief deputy of the Linn County Sheriff's Office, also declined to identify the rescued boys or their parents, citing a department policy against releasing names of minors who have not been charged with a crime or the names of witnesses in general.

Stuelke said the department's investigation revealed no indication of child endangerment. The parents were nearby and attentive to their children, he said.

Stuelke, who has investigated at least seven drownings at Palisades-Kepler in his 30 years with the department, said the river does not look as swift and deep as it is.

“Short of fencing it off, I don't know what else you could do to make it safer,” he said.

The Department of Natural Resources, which advises against swimming in the area, lacks the authority to keep people off the river, according to Kevin Szcodronski, chief of the DNR Parks Bureau.

The Cedar, he said, “is a meandered river that happens to flow through a state park.”

The legal definition of a meandered stream is “water of the state, open to all,” said Assistant Attorney General Dave Dorff.

It would take an act of the Legislature to grant the DNR that authority, said John Maehl, DNR parks supervisor for the Northeast Iowa District.

Park Ranger Jim Hansen said Palisades-Kepler has seven signs, one at each of the park's major river accesses, proclaiming, “Warning: Cedar River has dangerous currents.”

It would be difficult to access the river without seeing one of the signs, he said.

Szcodronski said he can't think of another state park that has similar warning signs.

Dorff said the attorney general's office is unaware of any cases in which the state has been found liable for injuries or death involving natural features.

The DNR's philosophy is that “there is an inherent risk in outdoor recreation and that people need to take responsibility for their own safety,” Szcodronski said.

Authorities said the breached dam that is considered the epicenter of the area's treacherous currents did not play a role in the death of Jones, who drowned about half a mile upriver from the dam.

Removing or modifying the dam is an unfunded priority of the DNR's rivers program, according to coordinator Nate Hoogeveen.

The current at the constricted breach is always swift, and at higher rates of flow it generates the circulating currents that make low-head dams so dangerous, according to Hoogeveen.

Only about a half dozen river stretches in Iowa have currents that swift, he said.

Maren Stoffett, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in the Quad Cities, said the Cedar River current would have been stronger than usual on Sunday.

The Cedar was flowing at 11,900 cubic feet per second at the Cedar Rapids gauge on Sunday evening, which compares with a median flow of 4,310 cfs, Stoffett said.

While there is no formula for converting flow to current velocity, she said the increased flow would have certainly translated into swifter currents.