By Carol Tannenhauser
At 3:16 PM, Monday, West Side Rag received a tip from Heike Wipperfurth:
“…person in the reservoir again, tons of police and fire brigades. same person? and why are there so many trucks and cars and whatnots for one person? they had a boat and some swimmers to bring her back in.”
Heike was right. Police confirmed that an unidentified, 36-year-old woman “jumped into the Central Park Reservoir, at West 93rd Street and West Drive, on Monday at 2:08 PM. An FDNY diver went into the water, with an NYPD officer assisting,” the spokesperson said.
This is the second time in five days that a woman has taken a swim in the Reservoir.
Was it the same person? The police don’t know yet, the spokesperson said. “The woman was taken from the water and removed to a hospital,” she added. Psychiatric? “We don’t give out that information.”
Thanks, Heike, for the tip.
If the police was able to determine her age, they could determine if it is the same person or not.
You know, actually it might be time to allow swimming in the reservoir. (Yes, I’ll make the obvious retort: It’s a reservoir! It has to stay pristine!)
Yet I’m not sure this is so. Clean enough, yes. Pristine? Worth looking into. What are the facts here?
If pristine is not required…
Build up one part of the shore, so there’s a gradual drop off. Hire a number of lifeguards.
A couple of hundred swimmers a day.
Fanciful or out of the box?
I’m not sure myself. (I bet someone out there knows.)
But the summers are getting hotter.
Where is the city going to get these lifeguards?
Currently city cannot even fully staff pools and beaches due to a lifeguard shortage. Situation is so dire pools are only opened to limited capacity and or some aren’t at all.
Other issue is what we’ve done many times already. There isn’t any sort of shallow end to reservoir, just a forty foot deep basin of water. This is not a place for a novice swimmer, children, etc…
Surprisingly there have been comparatively few deaths by drowning in Central Park reservoir, let’s keep it that way.
https://www.villagevoice.com/2017/07/07/the-macabre-history-of-central-parks-waters/
It’s not used as a part of the water supply.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir does supply water to other parts of Central Park including pool.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_Kennedy_Onassis_Reservoir
There’s a wall running down the middle from one gatehouse to the other that’s usually submerged. I bet you could lower the water level a bit and develop that into an urban beach-type area with swimming. Admission would be through the old historic gatehouse at the south end. Could be nice but it is deceptively deep.
“Hire lifeguards”? You know that there’s a real shortage of lifeguards and they need to prioritize public beaches and pools that actually serve a couple million New Yorkers.
It’s a reservoir. Not a beach. Not a pool . No need to spend millions of dollars to make it something it is not.
I was remembering just yesterday how they used to allow car traffic in Central Park. That wasn’t that long ago – surely closing CP to car traffic was considered “out of the box” thinking for decades. So maybe we should at least explore the idea of allowing swimming in the reservoir? Or in some of our fountains? Why should they be just decorative? One of the joys of summer is bringing my kids down to Washington Sq Park and letting them play in the fountain to cool off…one of the only fountains in the city where people are allowed in. Would be lovely to do that closer to home.
They can’t even keep the bikes, dogs, and baby strollers off the Reservoir running path let alone life guards. LOL what a joke.
The Reservoir is also a place of wildlife, but you’d never know it the way the EPA goes in at night and kills all the goose eggs in the Spring.
If there’s one thing we have too much of it’s the geese, which were once endangered and are now ubiquitous and who gift us almost incredible amounts of animal waste.
It’s isn’t a functioning reservoir. Hasn’t been in about 20 years.
Can’t we just have a nice space that isn’t destroyed by over-use?
She should be fined the cost of the rescue
How did geese get into this?
106 acres of the 843 acres of Central Park or 12.5% is taken up by the reservoir. Since it is no longer used for New York City’s water supply, our population has to decide if this is the best use of the 106 acres or if it would better to fill it in and use if for some other recreational purpose.