Washington Built the Budget Line. It Still Ran Short.
Washington State budgeted $20.6 million to pull abandoned and derelict vessels out of its waters this biennium. As of September 2, 2026, one of the four accounts paying for that work had $1,665.08 left.
That is not a typo.
The Washington Department of Natural Resources runs the Derelict Vessel Removal Program, and it publishes its own ledger. The 2025-2027 biennium budget breaks into four sources: $8.1 million from the state watercraft excise tax, $2 million from the Derelict Vessel Removal Account funded by vessel registration and commercial vessel fees, $4.5 million in Marine Debris Removal Grants from NOAA, and $6 million in state capital funds reserved for large vessel removals.
The registration fee account is the one that ran dry. DNR has spent $850,159.39 of it, committed another $769,175.53 to projects already underway, and lists $1,665.08 as estimated funds available.
The agency posted a notice about it. Removals went up, costs went up, and the account is low. Public entities that applied for reimbursement without earmarked funds are now told their applications will be prioritized case by case or held until the biennium ends in June 2027, when DNR intends to divide whatever remains among them proportionally.
THIS IS THE GOOD VERSION
It is worth being clear about what Washington got right.
The state wrote the program into statute. It built a dedicated account funded by the boaters who use the water. It keeps a public inventory of vessels of concern, ranked in five priority tiers, with Priority 1 reserved for vessels in danger of sinking, breaking up, blocking navigation channels, or presenting environmental risk such as leaking fuel or other hazardous substances. Priority 3 covers vessels that threaten habitat for species on a state or federal listing. Agencies can bid on removal contracts. Owners can turn a boat in before it becomes a wreck.
That is a functioning system. It has legal authority, a funding stream, a triage method, and a public list. Most states have none of those things.
It still ran short, because the demand turned out to be bigger than the budget written for it.
WHAT SITS ON THE BOTTOM IN THE MEANTIME
A vessel waiting on a priority list is not inert. It is a fuel tank, engine oil, ethylene glycol, and a lead acid battery inside a hull that corrodes the entire time it waits.
Under the Clean Water Act, a discharge that causes a film or sheen upon the surface of the water is reportable. That threshold is set low on purpose, because it does not take much petroleum to sheen a lake.
The waiting is the part that compounds. The U.S. Geological Survey has tracked petroleum contamination in groundwater for decades at its research site near Bemidji, Minnesota. Fuel that enters an aquatic system does not simply finish.
UTAH DOES NOT HAVE THIS PROBLEM YET
Utah does not have a derelict vessel account running low, because Utah does not have one at all.
Fathom Restoration is a disabled-veteran-led Utah 501(c)(3) nonprofit built to close that gap: the recovery of submerged vehicles, vessels, and debris from Utah’s lakes and waterways, statewide.
We built the Utah Waterways Submerged Debris Atlas to size the problem. The Atlas documents an estimated 499 submerged items across 20 Utah lakes, 226 of them confirmed individually, including 103 vessels and 56 vehicles.
Nobody is keeping a priority list for those. There is no account to run low.
We are building toward doing the lifting ourselves, in the order it has to happen: recovery-specific insurance, sovereign lands permits, and commercial dive certification. We have not completed a recovery, and we are not going to claim one before we have earned it.
What Washington proves is that this work has a price, that the price is knowable, and that a state can decide to pay it. A fund running low is the sound of a program doing its job and outgrowing its budget. Utah is not there yet. Utah has not made the first decision.
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://dnr.wa.gov/aquatics/recovering-derelict-vessels/derelict-vessel-inventory-and-funding
