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BUI offense now more serious
The new law, which took effect Friday, elevates homicide by watercraft to a second degree felony, increasing the prison time from seven to 10 years. The new law also permits judges to include DUI convictions for sentencing purposes.
According to the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, in the previous five years, Waterways Conservation Officers made 343 arrests for BUI. They've made another 15 arrests already this year, with a large portion of the boating season still ahead of us.
In addition, alcohol has been a factor in eight boating fatalities in the past three years.
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• If you purchased your hunting or fishing license last Sunday, the Pennsylvania Game Commission or Fish and Boat Commission may want to talk to you.
Active Outdoors, the Nashville-based license sales company contracted by the Game Commission and Fish and Boat Commission to sell licenses, experienced a service interruption with its point-of-sale system that prevented licenses sales from being finalized from 11 a.m. until 9 p.m.
The issues have since been resolved, but during this 10-hour period, about 85 percent of the Game Commission's issuing agents were unable to complete a transaction. According to the commission, 5,173 attempted transactions needed to be corrected.
Active Outdoors is contacting issuing agents involved in the faulty transactions,. It will then contact individual license buyers to correct the problems with those sales.
• Pennsylvania has officially gone over the 200 mark in terms of active bald eagle nests this year, a great milestone considering the birds had just three remaining nests in the state as recently as 1983.
As usual, Crawford County leads the way in active nests with 19. Crawford County had the only three active nests in the state in 1983.
But the Susquehanna River area has surpassed the Pymatuning region as top bald eagle area. Pike County also has 19 active nests, while just to the south, Lancaster County has 18 active nests.
A little closer to home, there are two active nests in Westmoreland County and one in Allegheny County.
Outdoors Editor F. Dale Lolley can be reached at dlolley@observer-reporter.com
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