York County's Alcohol Enforcement Team has taken to the water to look for youth drinking on Lake Wylie.
The team, which has taken a multijurisdictional approach to fighting underage drinking since 2007, started this additional police enforcement on and around the lake in June.
In six trips on the lake, the alcohol enforcement team has checked 132 boats, citing 28 minors for having alcohol. Five citations were written for transferring alcohol to minors, and officers found 15 people violating boat landing alcohol ordinances, said Lt. Mike Ligon.
"We want people to have fun on our waterways," he said. "We just want them to be safe on the lake."
Lake Wylie gets flooded with boaters from North and South Carolina on weekends, but Jane Alleva, spokesperson for Keystone Substance Abuse Services, said it's often when parents are at work that teens engage in such behavior.
Wednesday afternoon, a 19-year-old was cited for underage drinking, Ligon said. The teen was on the boat with one person of legal age and a couple others under 21, but he was the only one who admitted to drinking, Ligon said. After conducting a breath test, the teen was charged with consumption of alcohol underage.
Officials encourage parents to talk to teens about the dangers of drinking, especially on the water.
Underage drinking on a boat can be twice or even three times as dangerous as drinking and driving a car, York County Sheriff Bruce Bryant said.
There are 9,500 boats registered in York County, he said, and often the teens in those boats have no adult supervision.
"Parents need to know what's happening on their boats if there's alcohol," he said. "Because we will be checking."
The alcohol enforcement team, funded by license fees for Sunday alcohol sales, will continue to target underage drinkers on boats, sandbars and around the lake this holiday weekend and throughout the summer.
Drinking alcohol on a boat can be dangerous for anyone - impairing balance, reaction time, vision and judgment - but especially for teens and young adults whose brains aren't fully developed yet, said Diane Dasher from York County All On Board.
Alcohol is the leading contributing factor in boating accidents and has been linked to countless teen drownings and incidents on the water.
While the alcohol enforcement team is only on the lake select days, York County Sheriff's Office Sgt. Brent Mabry is on the lake 12 hours a day, five days a week looking for underage drinkers and unsafe boaters.
Mabry and his partner this summer, Wayne Richardson, a York County Sheriff's Office deputy who spends the off-season as a school resource officer, regularly troll the lake.
The officers look for people without life jackets, overloaded personal watercraft and impaired boaters. It's not illegal to have alcohol on the lake or even to drink and operate the boat, as long as the operator isn't impaired, Mabry said.
About noon Wednesday, Mabry turned on the lights on top of one of the York County Sheriff's Office boats, signaling to a boater pulling a tube with two young girls inside to slow down.
David and Mary Von Ins answered the officer's questions and all three granddaughters had life jackets on, earning them emergency whistles and a free drink certificate to an area eatery.
Though there weren't underage drinkers in that stop, Mabry said, it's all too common on the lake. He took the boat past Allison Creek Boat Landing, pointing out areas littered with beer bottles and empty chairs.
"They're probably not even up yet," Richardson said of the teens and young adults who often congregate there. An hour or so later, officers doing a safety check found the underage drinker.
