The Car Was Empty. It Still Had to Come Out.
On June 7, a woman called dispatchers in Sacramento County to report that her car had gone into the Sacramento River near Twin Cities and River roads. She got out safely. For most people, that is where the story ends.
For the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office, it was where the work started. FOX40 reported that deputies and the office's Marine Enforcement Detail recovered the sunken car from the river.
No One Inside, Still a Problem
The dive team knew the car was unoccupied. A sergeant on the team told FOX40 they still needed to get it out because of the environmental impact of leaving it in the water. With fuel and oil aboard, he said, responders have to move fast.
That is the part of a vehicle in the water that most people never see. A car does not stop being a car when it sinks. It goes down with everything it was carrying.
Diving Blind
Getting to it is its own problem. The sergeant described murky river water where divers cannot see their hands in front of their faces. The deeper they go, the less light reaches them, and the sediment they kick up off the bottom takes visibility down to nothing.
The bottom is not empty either. He listed trees, shopping carts, trash and other vehicles among the hazards divers work around. The recovery took a full team: divers, tenders, a communication crew and others, all trained for exactly this kind of work.
The Ones Still Down There
The line in the story that matters most came near the end. The sergeant said vehicles go into the water every couple of months, and that in the Sacramento River and surrounding waterways there are numerous vehicles that have been down there for some time. Getting them out, he said, takes time, money, manpower and resources.
That is the honest limit of public recovery. A dive team can answer the call when a car goes in today. The ones that went in years ago, with no call and no one waiting on shore, stay where they are.
The Same Is True in Utah
Utah's lakes and reservoirs carry the same kind of load. 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 Sacramento crew brought: trained divers, tenders, communication and the right equipment. We are building toward that recovery work, and we are doing it in order: insurance, permits and commercial dive certification first.
Time, Money, Manpower
The car in the Sacramento River came out because someone called and a team was ready. Most of what sits on the bottom of Utah's water never got a call. Getting it out will take the same four things the sergeant named. We intend to bring 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.
