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This was the press release that TWRA gave out Sunday. Looks as if they had a little different approach that the Ky boys did. They arrested 20 on Ky Lake alone!
-Off the NET NEWSERVICE WIRE-
It was a lot of checking with very little enforcement and that is exactly how Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency officers wanted Operation “Dry Water” to go.
“We checked approximately 100 boats from Friday evening into the evening on Sunday,” TWRA Boating Enforcement Agent George Birdwell said. “There were several field sobriety checks performed, and in our area only two people were arrested for boating under the influence or BUI. Both of those arrests occurred on Boone Lake.”
TWRA officials conducted the operation statewide over the weekend in an effort to keep people from endangering themselves and others on the waterways. This weekend was not as much a kickoff to the summer as an increase in patrols and media exposure to raise awareness. The weekend boating traffic would normally have been much heavier than it was, in part due to the weather.
“Weather was not the best and that meant decreased activity,” Birdwell said. “There was some rain Friday and then today it stopped the usual heavy Sunday crowd but there was plenty of activity on Saturday.”
TWRA patrols were in all areas of lakes across the state over the course of the weekend and they focused their efforts particularly around marinas where food and drink are sold to make sure those drinking alcoholic beverages at the marinas were not getting in a boat to head home.
“We were pleasantly surprised to observe the vast majority of boaters in and around marinas using designated drivers to get them where they were going,” Birdwell said. “We like to credit people for using good common sense and also like to think it has something to do with folks passing the boating safety course or perhaps paying attention to all of the good media coverage on this sort of thing. Whatever the reason, when people use sound judgment, like we saw this weekend, it makes the waterways safer for everybody involved.”
TWRA and local law enforcement plan to team up and keep patrol levels as frequent as possible throughout the summer months.
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