Congress passes safety regulations on duck boats, spurred by 2018 Branson tragedy

Congress has passed legislation that requires duck boat operators to abide by stricter safety regulations, four years after a sinking on Table Rock Lake in southwest Missouri killed 17 people.

The bill, repeatedly proposed by Missouri lawmakers, has previously failed to pass through both chambers. It finally found a path last week through the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual spending bill for the military and Department of Defense.

Under the legislation, which has passed through both the House and Senate and is awaiting a signature from President Joe Biden, duck boats must follow recommendations set by the National Transportation Safety Board — including mandated use of life jackets, increased buoyancy standards and the removal of boat canopies that make it difficult for passengers to escape if they sink. The duck boat that sank on Table Rock Lake had an overtop canopy, and state troopers found that no one aboard was wearing a life jacket.

Duck boats would also be required to have ballast tanks to avoid sinking in the case of floods, as well as bilge pumps to drain water from a flooding boat.

Though he criticized the spending bill as a whole, Missouri's U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley touted the inclusion of the duck boat legislation as a victory "after 3+ years of work."

"One of my top priorities in the U.S. Senate has been to pass critical duck boat safety reforms — it's a promise I made to Missourians in 2018," U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley said in a statement provided to the News-Leader. "I'm delighted to see my bill finally passed through the full Congress and is headed to the President's desk. We must act now to prevent another tragedy like we saw at Table Rock Lake."

More:'Like I've never seen before': A moment-by-moment account of the tragic duck boat sinking

After failure to act in 1999, lawmakers address safety concerns four years post-Branson

In 1999, 13 people died in Arkansas after a similar tragedy — a duck boat sinking in Lake Hamilton, near the town of Hot Springs. In the years to follow, Congress failed to pass any legislation amping up safety regulations, despite recommendations from the National Transportation Safety Board.

Almost two decades later, on July 19, 2018, it happened again in the state directly to the north, with 17 of the 31 passengers — including four children — drowning on board a boat operated by Ripley Entertainment's Ride the Ducks.

That year, Missouri's congressional delegation, as well as Arkansas' U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, introduced legislation to increase safety standards. When Hawley, a Republican, entered the Senate in 2019 after defeating former U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, he introduced a new version of the bill, co-sponsored by senators from both parties. It passed the Senate unanimously in December 2020, but stalled in the House.

Hawley and U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, who is retiring in January, re-introduced the bill in 2021 — calling it "common-sense" legislation. The bill was included in the reauthorization of the Coast Guard in April of this year after Hawley wrote a letter to a Senate committee urging them to add it, calling on them to "not delay any longer." That Coast Guard reauthorization measure was packaged into the military spending bill, which was approved by both chambers and awaits the president's signature.

A new company providing duck tours on Table Rock Lake, called Branson Duck Tours, opened last year, touting itself as a "newer and safer" option. A criminal case in Stone County against three employees of Ride the Ducks Branson was dismissed by a judge in April.

Galen Bacharier covers Missouri politics & government for the News-Leader. Contact him at gbacharier@news-leader.com, (573) 219-7440 or on Twitter @galenbacharier.