The mother of a Brooklyn teen who drowned in the Rockaways over the summer pleaded with lawmakers at City Hall on Tuesday to take steps to prevent more tragedies like her son’s.
“I don’t want to make another family feel what I’m going through on a daily basis,” Aminatu Noah said during a City Council hearing, three months after her 16-year-old boy Elyjah Chandler and his friend were swept away at Jacob Riis beach.
“They just want to go to the beach and have fun with their friends and hang out,” she said. “Unfortunately mines didn’t come home this summer.”
Chandler was one of seven people who drowned at New York City beaches over the summer, marking the deadliest season for swimmers on the waterfront since 2019.
The deaths prompted Queens Councilmember Shekar Krishnan, who chairs the parks committee, to introduce a batch of legislation aimed at improving access to swimming lessons across the five boroughs.
One bill would require the parks department to create an interactive map with the latest information about public swimming pools. Another bill would require the department to work with school officials to study the creation of a “junior lifeguard corps,” which would hire high school students as lifeguards who could help teach swimming lessons across the five boroughs. Another bill would require the parks department to create a comprehensive water safety campaign aimed at city schoolchildren. Four of the seven people who drowned at city beaches this summer were 18 years old or younger.
“This is a public health and a public safety crisis,” Krishnan said.
He also called for more investment in the parks department. He said he wants to extend the swimming season at beaches and pools to begin in mid-May and end in mid-October — and also extend the hours when swimming is allowed to 8 a.m. through 8 p.m. instead of the current window of 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Krishnan also criticized the Adams administration for not doing enough to fund the parks department.
“There’s no doubt the parks department is doing all it can with the resources it has, and the lack of resources from many who campaigned on increasing the parks budget is a huge contributor to this problem,” he said.
Liz Garcia, a spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams, said city lifeguards rescued more than 30 people this summer, noting the parks department hired more lifeguards this year despite a national shortage.
“We look forward to building on these efforts next summer through our pool infrastructure investments and the changes we secured to bring more lifeguards on deck,” Garcia said in a statement.
A parks department spokesperson said the agency was reviewing the legislation.