A two-year lock on new boat docks has been released and Lake Lanier residents now have a path to getting a permit through a process involving a random drawing.

Monday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced the procedures, which involve downloading a form and instructions starting Friday through a Web site, www.lakelaniersupl.com, or getting the paperwork at the Lanier Project Management Office at 1050 Buford Dam Road in Buford.

Request letters can be submitted by mail between July 15 and Oct. 13, addressed to Lake Lanier Permits, P.O. Box 9, Gonzalez, FL 32560.

“An outside firm will collect the request letters, enter them into a database and scrub the list for errors and duplicates,” according to a corps press release.

Only one request will be accepted for each piece of property.

Each week, the firm will post a list of the requests received from the previous week. About one week after the submission period ends, a final list will be published online representing those requests confirmed for an Oct. 28 lottery drawing.

The request letters will be evaluated in the order that they were randomly selected to determine if they meet site and eligibility requirements, as outlined in the corps’ Shoreline Management Plan.

The drawing will be shown on the Web and shown by video feed to a site in the Lake Lanier area.

A link to the Web broadcast will be available at www.lakelaniersupl.com and www.lanier.usace.army.mil.

Final decisions will be provided in writing.

The lottery results will be added to www.lanier.usace.army.mil and used to track the ranked properties, the results of their evaluation under the shoreline plan and the number of available dock permits.

The corps decided in June to restart accepting dock permits, after the lake level had remained at or above 1,064 feet above sea level for 30 consecutive days and the five-week forecast showed “the level or rise is sustainable.”

As of Monday afternoon, the lake was at 1,066.07 feet. Full pool is 1,071 feet.

A moratorium on new permits had been in place since April 2007.

The lake now has 174 remaining dock permits available, corps officials have said.

The shoreline plan and accompanying Environmental Impact Statement completed in 2004 limited the number of boat docks on the lake to 10,615.

E. Patrick Robbins, public affairs officer, said he believes the lottery drawing should “give all applicants an equal opportunity (for a permit).”