A grass-roots group seeking to bar the Whirlpool Jet Boat company from using a dock in Niagara-on-the- Lake, Ont., won a two-year battle in court last week but found more turbulence Monday night when the fight over the operation landed back before the Town Council.

Ontario Superior Court Justice J. W. Quinn, in a decision issued last week, said the jet boats are an “exciting, wet and exhilarating amusement ride that would be lawful and welcome” in many places, but “the dock [at Niagara-on-the Lake] is not one of them.”

The town renewed a nonconforming lease last year with Whirlpool Jet Boat owner John Kinney to continue to use dock space at the foot of Melville Street. Quinn ruled the lease was granted improperly.

Niagara-on-the-Lake Lord Mayor Gary Burroughs said Town Council members met behind closed doors Monday night and voted 5-4 to appeal the ruling, after “quite a debate.” Burroughs said he was the deciding vote in the town’s decision to move forward in the legal battle.

No date was set for the appeal, the mayor said, but without an appeal the Jet Boat company could have been out of business in Niagara-on-the-Lake within a few weeks.

Whirlpool Jet Boat employs 130 people on eight high-speed boats in a fleet that sets off from Niagara-on-the Lake and Queenston, Ont., on the Canadian side of the Niagara River, and Lewiston on the American side, soaking its riders with river spray and information about the region on a trip into the Whirlpool Rapids.

“[With the] economy imploding around us in Western New York and Southern Ontario,” Kinney told The Buffalo News, “we better do what we can do to secure our tourism.”

What kind of tourism, wondered Mary Mursell, chairwoman of the Niagara River Coalition, the group that brought the lawsuit. She and her group wish that visitors and residents alike could enjoy “passive public leisure time” on the river.

“Right now an individual can’t even pull up in a canoe,” Mursell said. “They are terrified. No one can reach their docks.”

Kinney first began the Jet Boat company in Niagara-on-the- Lake and has been there for the past 17 years.

“What the town of Niagara-on- the-Lake does with the water will be decided by the people, not a municipal judge,” Kinney said. “If it wants to have a Jet Boat, it will have to rezone.”

Mursell said she was “saddened to see the town voting to spend even more public funds [on an appeal] for the benefit of a private concern.”

She said the Niagara River Coalition represents more than 200 people concerned with safety and environmental matters on the river. The group tried to get the town to listen and to stop the lease from going forward, she said, but were banned from speaking at Town Council meetings.

“A court case was the last thing we wanted,” Mursell said.

“Of course the Jet Boat is important, but public input is important,” Burroughs said.

He said town officials are working on a community plan for the Old Town and looking at how the jet boats fits into the plan.

“If the community is dead set against [jet boats], then I will respect that,” Burroughs said.

Kinney said he was confident the town will win on appeal.

Mursell disagreed.

“Right now,” she said, the Niagara River “is just a highway for 50-mile-per-hour jet boats. It once was very peaceful.”

The judge said that by locking the gates, putting a fence up and charging admission for jet boat rides, the dock could not be considered a public waterfront park.

But Kinney said the fence had been up since 1968 and said locking gates at docks is something that is done as part of border security.

“You just can’t come and go as you like anymore on any waterway. It’s just not done anymore. How can anybody have valuable property and not have security,” Kinney said.

He also said that many docks and parks charge fees.

Kinney’s company is also the subject of a court battle in Queenston from wary residents who are trying to stop the Jet Boat expansion at the Sand Dock and are now appealing the Niagara Escarpment Commission decision to allow Whirlpool Jet Boat to double the size of its current building there.

“We are a small historic village, and since 1998 the Jet Boat has been very quietly ramping up,” said James Armstrong, president of the Queenston Community Association. “This is not a minor addition, and if they lose their lease on Melville Street [at Niagara-on-the- Lake], we will be inundated.”

Lewiston Mayor Richard F. Soluri said Kinney has a major investment in the village, and said he felt Kinney has tried to address and speak to individuals with concerns.

Soluri called the company a “good corporate citizen,” and said the company’s lease on the village waterfront will continue for another 15 years.