A years-long campaign, led in part by Bethel Park High School students, reached a triumphant milestone this week as the Pennsylvania House and Senate each unanimously passed House Bill 961, which requires improved safety markings on low-head dams across the Commonwealth, dams that claimed the life of beloved Bethel Park history teacher Jon Gentile in 2022.
The legislation requires the Department of Environmental Protection to maintain and annually update a statewide dam registry, share it with the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, and post dam locations publicly online. Existing law already requires the commission to mark hazardous dams, but the agency cannot mark what it doesn't know exists.
Gentile, who taught history at Bethel Park for 15 years, died in May 2022 after his kayak capsized at an unmarked low-head dam on the Delaware River in New Hope. He was 38. An experienced kayaker who mapped his route and followed all safety procedures, Gentile had no way of knowing the danger ahead.
“When you approach a low-head dam, it looks like an infinity pool. It is beautiful, serene, quiet, safe,” said Kathy Gentile, a Bethel Park High School teacher and Jon’s widow. “The average person would have no idea of the danger that lies ahead.”
The legislation carries special significance for Bethel Park, where students, staff and community members have spent more than two years turning grief into action. Seniors Cami Fisher and Nora Welch, both members of the district’s DECA chapter, were central to the effort, working alongside state Rep. Natalie Mihalek, R-Peters Township, and legislative aide Claudia Huber — Gentile’s niece and a 2020 Bethel Park graduate who drafted the original bill during a fellowship with the House of Representatives.
“We’ve been working the past few years to spread advocacy and educate students on low-head dams,” said Fisher, who was in eighth grade when Gentile died. “They’re very dangerous, and people don’t know what they are.”
Mihalek, who presented Gentile’s story on the House floor, called the unanimous passage proof that the democratic process can rise to meet a moral challenge.
“Sometimes the simple act of warning that there’s a danger ahead is all it takes,” she said. “In Jon’s case, there were no warnings, no signs, no indication he was passing over a very dangerous dam.”
The dangers of low-head dams are widely underestimated. The Dock Street Dam on the Susquehanna River in Harrisburg, just steps from the Capitol, has claimed more than 30 lives since 1935. Less than a year after Gentile’s death, two kayakers became trapped at the same dam where he died, though both escaped. Thousands of low-head dams are believed to exist throughout Pennsylvania, many unmapped and unmarked.
“This bill creates a database once and for all,” Mihalek said. “Where are they, who owns them, and who is ultimately responsible for them?”
Mihalek noted the bill’s passage is only the beginning. Pennsylvania’s 86,000 miles of waterways are home to countless low-head dams, many built in the 1940s and ’50s to deepen rivers. Those structures are now considered outdated and harmful to public safety and the environment.
“We hope this is the first of many steps that make our waterways safer,” she said. “Marking these dams is the bare minimum. Ultimately, we need to remove them.”
Huber, who credits Gentile with inspiring her career in public policy, said the legislation represents something greater than a policy victory.
“The advocacy that they’ve done and what they’ve been able to do — it’s not just about the bill,” she said. “It’s about my family’s life. We would all give anything for him to still be here with us.”
At Bethel Park High School, students in Kathy Gentile’s classes have followed the process closely, a real-time civics lesson few will forget. Fisher and Welch worked alongside Bethel Park alumnae Samira Gorman, now a freshman at Florida State, and Laura Casaldi, a Pitt freshman. The group has also taught kayaking and water safety at the district’s elementary school and raised funds for the Big Heart Scholarship, established in Gentile’s memory to honor students who display exceptional character, kindness, and compassion.
For Kathy Gentile, the bill’s passage fulfills a hope she has carried since losing her husband. For her and her family, she said, this has never been a political issue. “It is our moral responsibility to maintain safe waterways in our Commonwealth,’ she said. “Jon’s death was not in vain. His legacy will be that he lost his life, but in doing so, he helped to save others.”
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