Four Cars and a Motorcycle Were Still in the River Two Years Later
Hurricane Helene tore through western North Carolina. Nearly two years later, the rivers are still giving back what the flood put in them.
WLOS reported that on August 3, MountainTrue led an effort to remove four vehicles and a motorcycle from the Hungry River in Henderson County. Millions of pounds of debris have come out of the region's rivers since the storm. Cleanup crews say the work is far from over.
Weeks of Planning for One Day of Lifting
Pulling a car out of a river is not a matter of hooking a chain and driving away. The site on the Hungry River was remote, and crews spent weeks planning how to reach it safely while protecting the water.
They brought in UTVs first to scout the site and learn how the cars could come out. Then they got an excavator down to the river. Before any of it moved, they set booms downstream to catch any gas or oil still left in the vehicles.
That last step is the one most people never think about. A car in the water is not just scrap metal. It went in with fuel and oil aboard, which is why the booms went in before the excavator lifted anything.
The Money Has an End Date
MountainTrue says it has removed roughly 5.5 million pounds of debris from rivers across western North Carolina since Helene. A local grading company owner has volunteered his equipment and his time since the first days after the storm.
The group's Green Riverkeeper told WLOS that the main funding source has been $10 million from House Bill 47, and that money ends at the end of this year. MountainTrue is applying for more funds to keep going, because there is still a lot left in the rivers.
This is the pattern almost everywhere. Debris in the water outlasts the attention and the funding that follow a disaster. The cars do not leave when the cameras do.
What Sits in Utah's Water
Utah has not had a Helene. It does not need one. Vehicles and vessels end up in Utah lakes and reservoirs one at a time, through accidents, abandonment and old dumping, and most of them stay out of sight below the surface.
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. A sunken vehicle carries a fuel tank, engine oil, ethylene glycol and a lead acid battery. Under the Clean Water Act, a discharge that leaves a visible sheen on the water is reportable, and the U.S. Geological Survey has tracked petroleum contamination persisting in groundwater for decades at its research site near Bemidji, Minnesota.
What Fathom Does Today
Fathom Restoration is a disabled-veteran-led Utah 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and our volunteer divers work Utah's lakes and reservoirs today, bringing up the debris that settles where nobody can see it. On October 10, four of our divers worked Haws Point at Strawberry Reservoir and came up with about 35 pounds of trash by our estimate, including three folding chairs, an umbrella and a kite. On two September crew dives at Deer Creek Reservoir, we brought up about 58 pounds more.
That work is done by hand. The vehicles in the Atlas will take what the Hungry River crews used: planning, heavy equipment, containment booms and qualified people. We are building toward that recovery work, and we are doing it in order: insurance, permits and commercial dive certification first.
Two Years Is Not Long Enough
The Hungry River cars were in the water for almost two years, in a region where everyone knew the flood had happened. In Utah, most of what is on the bottom went in quietly, and nobody is counting the years. The work is the same either way. Someone has to plan it, pay for it and go get it.
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.
