Andy Johnson lobbied legislators for years to make boating safer only to see bill after bill die in committee. This year lawmakers agreed.
“It is tragic that it took deaths of two children to be a catalyst for the governor to step up and say this is an issue,” said Johnson, 36 of Tallapoosa. “I am still heartbroken for the family but this is something that prior to that happening we had brought to the legislature for years and it was shot down and shot down.”
As Memorial Day weekend approaches — perhaps the busiest day on Lake Lanier — seasoned boaters face a toughened law designed to make the lake safer. Last week it became illegal for anyone with a blood-alcohol content of .08 to operate a boat.
That’s the same legal threshold as for drunken driving in a car. Previously, the legal limit for boaters was .10. The difference amounts to about five beers instead of six in two hours for a man weighing 180 pounds.
The new law addresses more than drinking, and some boaters say even more steps are needed to train people on water safety and to enforce those regulations.
Starting next year, the state will require people born after July 1, 1998, to take a state-approved boating safety and education course to operate a vessel; and anyone who rents a watercraft with a 10-horsepower engine or larger will have to take an abbreviated course, although the law allows for rental businesses to give instruction the same day.
The law was passed after the deaths last year of Jake and Griffin Prince, 9 and 13, and 11-year-old Kile Glover. The Prince boys died after a boat allegedly steered by a drunken driver collided with their pontoon craft last June. Kile died in July when a Jet Ski hit him and a teenage girl while they were being towed on an inner tube.
Safety advocates complained last year that Georgia’s weak boating laws contributed to the boys’ deaths, and Gov. Nathan Deal was soon meeting with officials from the state Department of Natural Resources. DNR previously had pushed to make a .08 blood-alcohol ratio the standard for boating-under-the-influence and to require safety training. Deal pushed the law.
Reaction was mixed. Last Saturday, on a mucky day at Lake Lanier, seasoned boaters pulled up to the bar and tied up to a pier at Sunset Cove. While spirits flowed freely, several sailors were skeptical that the boating-under-the influence change would have much impact and advocated for tougher action to make waterways safer.
Many were confident of their own abilities at .10 — the former blood-alcohol content allowed — and were more fearful of the untrained and reckless. They favored more rangers on the lake, a requirement of training for newbies and a crackdown on speedboats and the personal watercraft most commonly piloted by amateurs.
“There is more money than brains on the water,” said Mark Reeves, 56 of Cumming. “My issue is, Don’t pull me over because you think I’ve been drinking all day. Go after those guys who are making poor decisions because they don’t even know how to drive a boat.”
While this is the last year that any 16-year-old can operate most motorboats without taking a DNR-approved course to teach safety and regulations — for instance, who has the right-of-way — many boaters thought older greenhorns also should have to learn the rules and demonstrate some skill to captain a boat.
“There are too many people out here who don’t know what they are doing,” said Stephanie Campbell, 39, of Buford.
“They really should have a boater’s license,” said Billy Sagy, 39 of Flowery Branch
Some said the new requirement that anyone younger than 13 has to wear a life jacket doesn't go far enough. "I would agree with everyone wearing a life jacket when the boat is moving," said Jody Cordell, 51, of Flowery Branch, the designated driver for his craft that day. "When I fished professionally, you had to have a life jacket."
Col. Eddie Henderson, who oversees DNR law enforcement, said the new safety rules, though initially exempting many boaters, represented a seismic shift in a state reluctant to regulate the popular recreation.
“It is a step in the right direction,” Henderson said. “Currently nothing is required. Anybody can rent a boat today even if they’ve never drove a boat in their life.”
Johnson, however, said the law may have little effect if the state doesn’t fund more rangers. The DNR shaved about 20 percent of its positions — down to about 200 rangers — since 2004, and statistics reflect the cuts. The agency regularly issued 400-plus BUI tickets in the 1990s. Since 2004 it has generally issued fewer than — sometimes many fewer than — 200.
“You can make all the laws in the world, but if you don’t have the enforcement it does no good,” Johnson said. “That is the one key to all of this. And that is the key unfortunately that is not really taken into account.”
DNR’s deputy commissioner Homer Bryson said, “I feel we have the adequate resources to meet our mission; I truly believe that. We’re able to put about the same number on Lake Lanier that we have in the past but we will be pulling them from elsewhere.
“Everybody will be working Memorial Day Weekend. The vast majority will be in boats.”
DNR plans to have six boats out on Lake Lanier working different zones, instead of the usual four; and it also plans to patrol by helicopter — a tactic that had gone by the wayside in recent years. The helicopter will sweep the lake to look for boats running without navigational lights.
“If you are going to have alcohol on board, designate your driver for the day,” said Capt. Thomas Barnard, who oversees the DNR Gainesville region “There will be no warnings. It is strictly zero tolerance.”
But reassigning rangers to work the heavily used Lanier will mean fewer patrols elsewhere, Johnson said.
Last year, 5 of the 12 fatalities and 13 of the 53 injuries statewide from boating accidents were in Lake Lanier. There were 36 drownings, with five of them at Lanier.
Statistics from past years don’t point to heavy-handed enforcement on the holiday. On Memorial Day weekend last year, Lanier accounted for six of the 27 BUI citations issued, and three of the seven injuries from boating accidents statewide, but only one accident involved alcohol, according to DNR figures.
Henderson said the stats might reflect the effectiveness of DNR’s drumbeat about the dangers of alcohol on the water.
Johnson is more skeptical, a view reinforced by his visits to a notorious party spot on the lake.
“They try to leave boaters alone — it is the ones who act foolish or do something dangerous that draws attention to them,” he said of the DNR. “They could pull up to Cocktail Cove and write tickets until their hands cramped. The vomit on the water there is enough to tell you that.”
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