At about 11 a.m. on Saturday, October 10, the Fitzwilliam Fire Department in New Hampshire got a call about a vehicle sinking in Laurel Lake. When firefighters arrived, they found a truck in the water and an active fuel leak.
What followed, as reported by MyKeeneNow, was a response that pulled in people from two states.
One Truck, a Long List of Responders
Fitzwilliam set up incident command. Keene firefighters came in with a boat and a utility trailer and took over operational command of the response. The Winchendon, Massachusetts, Fire Department sent a dive team and shore support to help recover the vehicle.
On the water, crews spread floating containment barriers to keep the diesel from moving across the lake. A solid boom launched from the Keene Fire Department boat isolated the spill, and more barriers went up to protect the lake's downstream outflows.
The New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services provided technical help and estimated the release at about 30 gallons of diesel.
Then the divers went to work. The Winchendon dive team secured the submerged truck, and J&J Truck Service and Towing pulled it out of the lake. Once the truck was out and the first containment work was done, command passed to the state environmental agency, which is overseeing the assessment and cleanup.
Troy Fire, Fitzwilliam Police and Troy Police helped with staffing and traffic control. Fitzwilliam-Troy Ambulance stood by on scene.
That is four fire departments, two police departments, an ambulance crew, a state agency, a dive team and a tow company for one truck.
This Is What It Looks Like When It Goes Right
Nobody should read that as overkill. A vehicle in the water is a fuel problem, and the crews at Laurel Lake treated it like one. They caught it while it was happening, boxed the fuel in, got the truck out the same day and handed the lake to the people who will check what is left.
That is the best case. It depends on somebody seeing the vehicle go in.
The Ones Nobody Saw
Plenty of vehicles on the bottom of a lake never got a containment boom. Nobody saw them go in, or nobody called it in, and they are still down there.
A submerged vehicle carries a fuel tank, engine oil, ethylene glycol and a lead acid battery into the water with it. Under the Clean Water Act, a discharge that leaves a visible sheen on the water is reportable. And petroleum does not simply go away. The U.S. Geological Survey has tracked petroleum contamination persisting in groundwater for decades at its research site near Bemidji, Minnesota.
Our Utah Waterways Submerged Debris Atlas documents an estimated 499 submerged items across 20 Utah lakes, including 56 vehicles and 103 vessels that are individually confirmed.
What We Do Now, and What We Are Building
Fathom Restoration is a disabled-veteran-led Utah 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and today our volunteer divers carry trash out of Utah's lakes and reservoirs by hand. Since September we have logged volunteer dive cleanups at Deer Creek, Sand Hollow and Strawberry, about 93 pounds of trash by our estimate across 63 volunteer hours.
The vehicles will take far more than hands. Laurel Lake shows what that work requires: trained divers, containment on the surface, a tow operator and an environmental agency in the loop. We are working to start recovering submerged vehicles, and we are doing it in order: insurance, permits and commercial dive certification first.
Thirty Gallons
Thirty gallons of diesel in one New Hampshire lake was enough to bring out responders from two states. The vehicles sitting on the bottom of Utah's lakes are still waiting for their turn. We intend to get to them.
Fathom Restoration is a disabled-veteran-led Utah 501(c)(3) nonprofit running volunteer dive cleanups on Utah's lakes and waterways and building toward the recovery of submerged vehicles and vessels. Donate or volunteer at fathomrestoration.org.
Source: https://mykeenenow.com/news/219912-diesel-spill-reported-after-truck-sinks-in-laurel-lake/
