(Radio Iowa) – Many Iowans will try to beat the summer heat with a boat ride, but if they’re also sipping suds while zipping around on the water, there could be legal — and lethal — consequences. Nate Carr, an Iowa D-N-R conservation officer, says the state’s annual Operation Dry Water will get underway later this week, as the busy 4th of July holiday weekend begins. “Operation Dry Water is a national outreach and enforcement campaign aimed at raising awareness about the dangers of boating under the influence,” Carr says, “and just removing impaired operators from our nation’s waterways.”

During the statewide operation last year, the D-N-R and its partners stopped nearly 13-hundred boats carrying more than five-thousand boaters, resulting in a total of 477 warnings or citations for boating under the influence. “It is an issue, and it’s an issue we see here in Iowa, especially on some of our our bigger, more popular waterways,” Carr says, “but it goes down all the way to the smallest waterways, too.” Carr says alcohol use is the leading contributing factor in recreational boating deaths, as intoxicated passengers can easily slip and fall overboard or suffer other life-threatening incidents. “Anytime you’re operating with a blood-alcohol concentration of .08 or higher, just like driving, that is illegal in the state of Iowa,” Carr says. “Obviously, alcohol can impair boaters’ judgment, balance, vision and reaction time, which are all things that you really need when you’re operating a boat on a waterway.”

Iowa DNR photo

The D-N-R says one-third of all boating fatalities nationally involve alcohol, and many of those victims are innocent bystanders.