The Last Dive Team in the County Is Working on 20-Year-Old Gear

Last December, ice fishermen at a pond in Richland County, Ohio, spotted something on their sonar around noon. It was a stolen truck sitting on the bottom in about twelve feet of water. Ice had to be cut away before anyone could go in, and the sun was down before the county dive team hit the water with air temperatures in the 20s. Two deputies descended, confirmed nobody was inside, then worked tow straps around the truck so it could be lifted out. It was the first callout for one of them.

One County, One Team

The Richland County Sheriff’s Office dive team is now the only one left in the county. Shelby Fire Department had a team once. Mifflin Township had a team once. Both are gone. Sheriff Steve Sheldon put it plainly to Richland Source: they are the only game in town.

A dive team is not a legal requirement for a sheriff’s office. Richland County keeps one anyway, staffed by six deputies who train monthly at lakes like Pleasant Hill. Lt. Steve Boyd, the team leader, said they have had three callouts in the last three weeks, all searching ponds for evidence.

Zero Visibility Is the Normal Condition

Boyd said visibility in the water they dive is about one foot on a good day, and often it is nothing at all. Divers follow directions relayed through a rope held by a teammate on the surface, where different numbers of tugs mean change direction, come up, or hold position. To prepare, the team blacks out their masks in the pool and practices assembling PVC pipe and threading nuts and bolts by feel.

That is the skill the job actually requires. Finding a vehicle is one problem. Rigging it in the dark so it comes up in one piece is another.

The Equipment Is Older Than Some of the Divers

Boyd does not soften the equipment picture. The team’s newest dry suit is close to 20 years old. A single complete set of gear for one diver, including buoyancy compensator, regulator and mask, runs $5,000 to $10,000. The sheriff said the team needs about $60,000 to replace what is worn out.

Most of what they have came donated or at a reduced rate. The city of Shelby gave them a boat. Their equipment trailer came cheap from a county in southwest Ohio and arrived empty. During the training day covered by Richland Source, a donated boat’s fuel pump failed once the crew cleared the no-wake zone, and the boat was retired for the day.

Utah Has the Same Math

Fathom Restoration is a disabled-veteran-led Utah 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and we are a diver organization first. Our mission is the recovery of submerged vehicles, vessels, and debris from lakes and waterways across the state.

Public dive teams exist to save people and close cases. That is the right priority, and it is not the same job as pulling a corroding vehicle off a lakebed months or years after it went in. Nobody is funded for the second job, so the vehicle stays.

It does not sit inert. A car on a lakebed is a fuel tank, engine oil, ethylene glycol, and a lead acid battery inside a housing that keeps corroding. Under the Clean Water Act, a discharge that leaves a visible sheen on the surface is reportable. The U.S. Geological Survey has tracked petroleum contamination persisting in groundwater for decades at its research site near Bemidji, Minnesota.

We built the Utah Waterways Submerged Debris Atlas to keep count. It documents an estimated 499 submerged items across 20 Utah lakes, 226 of them confirmed individually, including 103 vessels and 56 vehicles.

We are building toward doing this recovery work ourselves, in the order it has to happen: recovery-specific insurance, sovereign lands permits, and commercial dive certification, before a single lift. The Ohio story is a reminder of why that order matters. Capability is gear that works, training in zero visibility, and money that shows up before the callout does.

If you have seen a submerged vehicle, vessel, or debris in a Utah waterway, report it at fathomrestoration.org.

Fathom Restoration is a disabled-veteran-led Utah 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to lake cleanup and the recovery of submerged vehicles, vessels, and debris from Utah’s lakes and waterways. Donate / Volunteer / Report a vehicle at fathomrestoration.org.

Source: https://www.richlandsource.com/2026/09/07/evidence-vehicles-and-closure-inside-crucial-missions-of-the-richland-county-sheriffs-office-dive-team/