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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, as we begin another stretch of days in the '90s around here, we end today by turning our attention to an issue plaguing New York City's public swimming areas. Every year, the city aims to employ 1,400 lifeguards to watch over its 14 miles of pools and beaches. This year, only 750 lifeguards are stationed, resulting in half of the protection New Yorkers need to safely enjoy a swim not being there.

From whirlpools to rip currents, each New York City beach poses its own unique set of safety risks. It's easy to imagine the dangerous consequences of an understaffed beach. Joining us now to share her reporting on the lifeguard shortage and the conflicts at the core of the issue is Katie Honan, senior reporter at the nonprofit news organization, The City and co-host of the FAQ NYC podcast. Hey, Katie. Welcome back to WNYC.

Katie Honan: Thanks so much for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: If we were to go to a public pool or beach in New York City, how would we notice that it's missing roughly that is, that the city is missing roughly half of the lifeguards it aimed to hire?

Katie Honan: Well, if you're on a beach, it'll be the red flags. If you go to a beach like Rockaway, which is currently under a federal construction project, there are a lot of beaches closed because of that project, although I'm not a professional, but I would contend that maybe some of those beaches could actually be staff of lifeguards. At a pool, you'll see capacity limitations. Maybe if it's a really big pool, only half of the pool will be open.

I also think a lot of the strain on the shortage is on the actual lifeguards working. Where you may used to have four lifeguards splitting on a chair, now you have two, so you're kind of alternating and maybe there's a floater around who's giving multiple lifeguard chairs breaks. That is actually probably the people feeling it the most. The lifeguards, the 750 or so lifeguards who are actually working.

Brian Lehrer: Have we seen a noticeable impact on public safety due to the shortage of lifeguards? Are there more drownings or other injuries than usual this year or just fewer places that they open?

Katie Honan: I would say it's fewer places that they open. Although there have been two fatal drownings in Rockaway Beach. The first was a 14-year-old. He drowned when the lifeguards had called people out of the water because of bad weather. The second was a 32-year-old man who went in on an unguarded beach and I guess was rescued in a surfing area in Rockaway Beach. That was at a time when lifeguards were on duty, but I think technically where he went in, the Parks Department and I'm sure the lifeguard officials would contend that this was not technically someone who drowned while lifeguards were monitoring him.

Brian Lehrer: In March, you noted that the lifeguard shortage is also affecting local summer camps who at the time were cut off from using public pools, anticipating the summer. Now that camp is actually in session, are summer camps still unable to use the city's pools and what are the implications of that?

Katie Honan: To my knowledge, they aren't. Again, that comes down to a staffing issue. Last summer we saw that the learn-to-swim programs and a lot of the swimming programs and early morning lap swim was cut because of the lifeguard shortage. Another effect was, look, they can't dedicate lifeguards. Even though the summer camps bring their own lifeguards, it would just, again, be a capacity concern at pools, having however many kids in a pool. That is not allowed this summer as well, unfortunately.

Brian Lehrer: Now, listeners, have you visited a public pool or beach in New York City this summer? Did you notice a shortage of lifeguards? What impact did that have on your experience? Do we have lifeguards listening in at the moment? Anybody to answer any of those questions, give us a call, 212-433-WNYC. What's your take on the reasons behind the shortage of lifeguards in the city? We're going to get into that now and how does it affect your day-to-day on the job?

If you are a lifeguard or otherwise work around a pool or a beach in New York City, 212-433-WNYC, call or text, 212-433-9692 for Katie Honan from the nonprofit news organization, The City. Katie, how does the City go about hiring lifeguards? Is the issue at all that there aren't enough local teenagers looking for summer jobs?

Katie Honan: It's a big mix of things and I will say this year the Parks Department did a lot of things to try to improve recruitment. They did more of it. They actually made the qualifying test easier. They shaved 10 minutes off the time so you could swim 50 yards in 45 seconds as opposed to 35. If you got close but didn't quite hit it, they offered you could go to any indoor pool in the city, you could take a skills training session.

They reach out to high school swim teams. They do a lot of outreach. I do think they also increased the wages. The starting pay hourly used to be $16.10, now it's $19.46. Then there's an additional 3% bonus, not bonus but a 3% increase due to the contract negotiations with their union. I speak to lifeguards and the reality is it's a very difficult job. You have to work six days a week a lot of the times. I know being at the beach can be fun when you're on the beach, but being a beach lifeguard from 10:00 AM to 06:00 PM is very, very difficult.

The lifeguards do an amazing job under the circumstances that they're in guarding the beach, but it's hard. It really weighs on you. You're in the sun all day, you're maybe making 10-20 rescues sometimes when it's bad. I don't blame some teenagers especially, or even older people, whoever wants to be a lifeguard, for wanting to work a retail job or do really anything else instead. That being said, there's a lot of other institutional issues that are to blame for this shortage.

Brian Lehrer: We'll get into the institutional issues, but I guess if you're a teenager and you have a choice between, I don't know, scooping ice cream or having a job that's actually a matter of life and death on your shoulders, maybe you're going to scoop the ice cream. According to an investigation in New York Magazine, the lifeguards union leadership has been particularly problematic.

The article cites decades of alleged self-enrichment, allegations of falsifying drowning reports, rigging swim tests for loyal lifeguards, whatever loyal means in that context, and retaining lifeguards accused of sexual misconduct. Those are all quotes from New York Magazine. How is this legacy of problems with union leadership and corrupt or allegedly corrupt union leadership played into the current staffing shortage?

Katie Honan: I don't think it's deterred anyone. I know I've spoken to a lot of lifeguards from that New York Magazine article after the fact, and they were very happy for it. I mean, the reality is the problems with this Lifeguard Union, the union representing the lifeguard supervisors and the lifeguards under DC37, my entire life, my many decades of living, this has been an issue.

I recently read Mark Green's 1994 when he was public advocate report on the problems with Peter Stein, the head of the Lifeguard Union, and just these institutional problems where the people in charge of the lifeguard test couldn't even tell the investigators what the lifeguard test was. You had people who were in charge making a lot of money from the city, who didn't know if there was an eye exam or was there a written component.

These are problems that are really deeply rooted within this lifeguard division. There was a DOI investigation prompted by the New York Magazine report that found a lot of these things did not change. I will say that that magazine article came out in 2020, and in 2021, there was 1,013 lifeguards, and since then, it's reduced by about 300. I don't think it's related in terms of deterring people.

I think the lifeguards who are working and there's a long legacy of lifeguards who've tried to stop a lot of this alleged or not even alleged true corruption, and they've been whistleblowers and they've suffered because of it. This has been going back for decades.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Rebecca in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Rebecca.

Rebecca: Hi, Brian. I guess I just wanted to say I started using the public pools really for the first time, trying to go regularly this summer to swim some laps. I go to the pool in Bed-Stuy. It's wonderful because you can just show up. You just need a lock. I love the experience of it. No ID, no money like going to the beach, no traffic. You get there and half of the pool is closed, and there's a bunch of kids and teens and families having a great time. It's kind of unnecessarily frustrating probably on both sides for people who are trying to swim laps and for kids that are just trying to hang out and there's obviously enough room.

The lifeguards themselves are super attentive, super nice, and people are frustrated and asking about swimming laps and they're just like, "Yes, we don't have enough people." It seems like it could be such a good summer job, too. I'm a social worker, as somebody who used to work with young people, such a good opportunity in the summertime if there was appropriate training and pay. It just feels frustrating. It feels like it's this thing that could be so useful and beneficial on so many levels.

Brian Lehrer: Report from poolside on the human experience of it. Rebecca, thank you very much. Holly in Park Slope, you're on WNYC. Hi, Holly.

Holly: Hi. I regularly go to the beach, usually getting off by the aquarium on Coney Island, Brighton Beach, and there are no lifeguards. You go swimming and I would say three-quarters of the beach, there's no one there in case something happens. They have Parks Department people there, and they really don't do anything. They don't swim. Some of them yell at you to get out of the water, and people ignore them. As soon as they walk by, they get back in. It just seems like a very dangerous situation. I just want to say before COVID, the beaches were very adequately covered by young men who were on their high school swim teams. I'm just wondering what happened to them.

Brian Lehrer: Women too, I would imagine. Katie, what are you thinking listening to Holly's call about Brighton Beach Coney Island?

Katie Honan: Yes, that's the frustration that people at four of the five boroughs have beaches. This is what happens, you go to a beach and it's closed. There's a red flag, and maybe there wasn't a red flag there last weekend, but now there is, and I know in speaking to many lifeguards, the harsh reality is, and this is what DOI and all these investigators try to get to the Parks Departments sometimes doesn't even know because it's up to the lifeguard, supervisors and whoever's running the lifeguards. A lot of that is controlled through the union. Beaches will be closed and no one knows why because of the sort of--

If you go to Long Island, or I went to the Jersey Shore last year and I was radicalized by what a functioning lifeguard system looked like at Asbury Park where they have four-wheelers and they have major equipment, and the lifeguards use radios and they are dispatched around, the lifeguards don't have radios to communicate, they don't. The only people on those little four-wheelers on the beach are the pep officers, the parks enforcement police officers who the last caller was referencing. It's just not the same kind of equipment and support that you find on Long Island beaches or down at the Jersey Shore, and this is a [unintelligible 00:11:46] the country.

Brian Lehrer: This is really important context. You mean the lifeguard shortage that we've been talking about on the show for summer after summer, it feels like, and that a lot of New Yorkers are aware of, that shortage does not generalize to the Long Island beaches or to the Jersey Shore?

Katie Honan: There is a shortage, but I do believe it's worse in New York City. In speaking of lifeguards here in the city, they have friends who work at Jones Beach or at Long Beach, it's just a much more professional operation. I interviewed a woman last summer who works in Jones Beach, and when you tell her what goes on in New York City, the other thing I'll point out too is the test to be a New York City lifeguard is way more difficult than in any other nearby municipality.

You know Reese Park, Reese Beach, which is on Rockaway Beach, it is federally run. That task is way different. It's not even a standardized lifeguard association, I forget exactly the full term, but it's way different and a lot of lifeguards speculate that they keep it that way to keep control within the Lifeguard Union who are running lifeguard schools. This is all, it goes to this top-level corruption of people in charge and no one knows why they can't break this or even stop this. It's been going on for decades, but it's actually easier to be a lifeguard at Jones Beach, at Reese Park, Jersey Shore. They have different, and it's more standardized as opposed to what you have here in the city.

Brian Lehrer: Well, I was thinking--

Katie Honan: There is a nationwide lifeguard shortage, that is not untrue but it just seems worse in the city.

Brian Lehrer: Why would the union want to diminish the number of potential members it has, the number of potential lifeguards who are working?

Katie Honan: I really wish I knew. Unfortunately, I can never figure out why. I do know the Parks Department has done some change, has made some minor changes that might seem minor, but are actually pretty major. For example, in the past, and this was also brought up in the DOI report, these are seasonal jobs and of course, there's a lot of people who are seasonal lifeguards who would love to be year-round lifeguards at the indoor pools throughout the city. In the past, these jobs were given out by the people who are in the lifeguard school, which are effectively the people who are in charge of the union.

This year, around December, I heard from a bunch of lifeguards, they got for the first time letters in the mail that said, "We have openings for year-round lifeguard jobs. If you'd like to apply, you can apply," and this sounds very silly because any other New York City job, there's a process to get hired. In this case, this was the first time, I'm talking lifeguards who'd been working on the beach for 25 years, the first time they'd been notified of that job. That's one way too, they can dole out year-round jobs to people who have been loyal, which is with the DOI report got a hiccup.

Brian Lehrer: Quick addendum, I was going to take Margaret and Seacliff, we don't have time to put her on the air, but I'll ask her question. She thinks there are fewer people who are learning to swim in the New York City area than in the past or there are fewer even qualified people to be lifeguards. 10 seconds, Katie, do you think that's the case?

Katie Honan: That's the case, and I know the city's been investing more money, including their Parks Department to actually teach more kids how to swim. I think 6,000 additional kids in this upcoming school year will be able to learn how to swim, which is great for the future.

Brian Lehrer: Katie Honan, senior reporter at the nonprofit news organization, The City and co-host of the podcast, FAQ NYC. Katie, thanks.

Katie Honan: Thanks so much. Stay safe.

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