LAW ENFORCEMENT GETS NEW BOATHOUSE ON LAKE SINCLAIR

MILLEDGEVILLE - Officials from the state Department of Natural Resources,
Baldwin and Putnam counties' sheriff's offices and Georgia Power unveiled
Thursday a $90,000, four-stall boathouse intended to provide law
enforcement quicker access to Lake Sinclair.

DNR rangers will use two of the stalls, and a retired DNR boat donated this
year to the two sheriff's offices will be housed in a third stall. Putnam
County Sheriff Howard Sills said the boathouse gives law enforcement the
ability to respond immediately to any emergency on the lake.

The boathouse "gives us a secure location to store our boats on the water,
where all we have to do is drop them in the water and go," Sills said. "We
don't have to haul the boat from the (sheriff's) office or call DNR - now
we have an all-weather ability to respond to whatever we need to."

The boathouse has a small office with communications equipment and an
alcohol breath sensor, and it provides officers transporting a prisoner off
the lake with a better facility than just taking the prisoner to a public
boat ramp, Sills said.

Baldwin County Sheriff Bill Massee said the boathouse is the latest example
of cooperation among the two sheriff's offices, DNR rangers and Georgia Power.

"These four agencies have always had an excellent working relationship,
even prior to this facility," Massee said.

Massee added that law enforcement on Lake Sinclair goes beyond the routine
duties of keeping personal watercraft operators away from docks and
swimmers or taking drunken boat operators into custody.

"Having a lake patrol has been a strong deterrent in residential burglaries
and thefts out of boathouses all across this lake," he said.

Massee has two boats he has used in the past to patrol Lake Sinclair, but
he said he plans to sell both of those and use only the boat donated by DNR
to the sheriff's offices. In past years, deputies from the two counties
have worked together to patrol the lake, and both sheriffs said they plan
to continue those efforts.

Putnam County, which has shoreline on both Lake Sinclair and Lake Oconee,
keeps its boat primarily on Lake Oconee, though Sills said he has used his
boat on Sinclair in the past. Sills plans to build a smaller boathouse on
Lake Oconee to house the Putnam County boat there.

Both sheriff's offices and Georgia Power contributed $5,000 to the project,
with DNR picking up the additional $75,000 of the cost. Georgia Power also
contributed the land where the boathouse is built. Sills and Massee both
used money from drug seizures to pay for their portions of the boathouse,
avoiding the use of taxpayer dollars.

Guerry Brooks, Georgia Power's land resources representative for Lake
Sinclair, said it's important to the electric company to have a law
enforcement presence on the lake.

"We own the lake, but we don't have law enforcement powers," Brooks said.
"Without them, we'd have lots of problems with this lake."