Sunk truck removed from Lake Winnipesaukee, no leaks found

GILFORD — A pickup truck was recovered from the bottom of Lake Winnipesaukee on Thursday. Crews worked for more than four hours to tow the vehicle from about 50 feet of water near Gilford Town Beach, to a flatbed at the town docks.

“I’m just glad it’s out of the lake,  and it doesn’t seem to have caused pollution,” said Town Administrator Scott Dunn, who was standing among a crowd of spectators watching the truck come out of the water.

Jim Martin, spokesperson for the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, said it did not appear there were any leaks, and the divers didn't see any indication of chemical pollution.

“We did recover about 300 yards of cable, some dive equipment, a grappling hook and a cinder block, but otherwise we just did some untangling and cleaning, and started towing,” said Nick Sackos of Dive Winnipesaukee, who was the first diver in the water, known as “Eagle 1.”

Crews were at the beach at 8:30 a.m. on April 23, to start the recovery, a collaborative effort of about a dozen people through Green Site Services, Marine Solutions and Dive Winnipesaukee. It was sunny with temperatures in the high 40s, but the wind was whipping, causing white caps on the water.

A small crowd gathered at the beach, mostly of state and town employees, and also some who heard Thursday was the day the Honda Ridgeline would be removed.

One was Ken Gagne, who called himself a “digital nomad” who works from the road as a project manager for a web hosting company, and happened to be in town dog sitting.

After reading about the recovery effort in The Daily Sun, Gagne emailed Dive Winnipesaukee to find out the timeline, so he could view it for himself.

“I’ve been coming to Lake Winnipesaukee since I was a kid, and I’ve never seen this,” Gagne said. “It’s exciting seeing artifacts being pulled from the lake.”

Others, like Steve Taber, of Laconia, went to the Glendale Docks to watch the truck be towed out loaded onto a flatbed. Taber also read about the story in the newspaper, and thought it was something he needed to check out.

“Thank goodness it’s out,” Taber said. “I’m sure we get enough pollution from summer people.”

While there were a handful of spectators at the beach watching the three recovery boats, with crew and divers at work, the crowd grew exponentially as the day continued.

Just in front of Gilford Town Beach, the boats surrounded a white marker in the water while Sackos was underneath attaching buoyancy bags. They battled white caps and wind, but suddenly, at 9:50 a.m., an orange and gray bag popped up to the surface. About five minutes later, a large gray bag popped up.

Martin arrived at the beach, and said he spoke with members of the Spill Response Team, who said the recovery effort was going very well. By about 10:30 a.m., one of the smaller boats, driven by Bryan McDonald, with Will Reese onboard, had moved the truck and three bags about 100 feet from shore. A fourth bag emerged, and a fifth, and divers surfaced and got onto the smaller boat about 10 minutes later.

Around 11:15 a.m., the crew made the slow trip through the white caps toward Marine Patrol headquarters in Glendale, where crews were staging for the final stage. Tim McDonald, who owns Marine Solutions with his brother Bryan, said when they rounded the corner, there were three- to four-foot waves.

“It is one of those things where you try to time it as best as you can, for the environmental factors. But at the end of the day, every single second it is down there, even though we didn’t see leaking, you run the risk,” Tim said. “But we had everything deployed in anticipation of something leaking, and we didn’t see anything.”

He said it was a technical recovery considering the depth, and there was no nearby shore access, so it had to be towed through the water.

“So, working with a couple boats, and two crews were able to attach the buoyancy bags, lift it to the surface. And now the boat will come in and we’ll kitty it in until it hits bottom, and now comes the laborious action of getting it onto the flatbed,” Tim said.

Sackos and fellow diver Matt Sharp have about 40 years of experience recovering all kinds of vehicles. When they retrieved the truck, it was on its roof, so Sharp, "Eagle 2," got in the water to attach a cable from a salvage truck to flip it over.

When this happened, around 12:45 p.m., the crowd had grown to about 50 people, who clapped and cheered.

Tim, along with “Moosh” Fanning of Marine Solutions, directed employees as they pulled the truck up onto the flatbed.

“Now, we’re going to get it to the shore, and you’ll see us kind of boom the whole area, just in case there is any oil,” Tim said. “We work well with the guys from Dive Winnipesaukee. We do anything from 100 to 150 salvages a year, and we’ve recovered trucks, airplanes, you name it.”

At 12:55 p.m., the truck was officially out, and Dunn said it was a relief to finally have it removed, after being sunk since March 13.

“Show’s over,” he said.

This all began when the owner of the truck, an angler, drove over a thin patch of ice. The truck was partially submerged at first, and efforts to bring it up were unsuccessful. It was left overnight, and ultimately sunk to the bottom.

Staff of NH DES saw no visible sheen on March 16, to indicate a leak of oil or gas, and Martin said a local contractor deployed a submersible drone to check the area. The ice conditions were not stable then, and the contractor recommended waiting until ice-out. No fine was issued, with the understanding the owner would remove it.

The owner of the truck attempted to recover it in the following days in what NH Fish and Game Conservation Officer Chris Bryson called “high-risk” efforts. The truck was pulled underwater from the Dockham Shore area to about 0.75 miles off the coast of Gilford Town Beach.

Town leaders weren’t happy with the process, which involved a number of makeshift attempts. This included attaching a winch to a tree, and creating a canal with a chainsaw to pull it.

When Dunn found out about the efforts at the beach, he confronted the owner, and went to the selectboard on April 8, to inform them of what was taking place. They were all concerned about the potential environmental hazard, and said the truck needed to be removed as soon as possible.

Dunn contacted Executive Councilor Joe Kenney, who sponsored a law involving the removal of vehicles from waterbodies in the state Senate two decades earlier. Kenney brought the issue to the Governor and Executive Council Meeting on April 13, where he spoke to NH DES Commissioner Robert Scott.

The Gilford Selectboard held a special meeting on April 15, and unanimously voted to allow NH DES staff to use the beach for recovery, without equipment. NH DES staff gave the owner a final 48 hours to remove the vehicle. The timeline came and went, and it was then in the hands of state staff, with the owner responsible for the cost.

“We have been in touch with the owner and the truck will be returned,” Martin said. “We will be seeking cost recovery from the owner. We will be in touch with him and sharing with him the cost of the operation, and working with him on recovering the expense.”

Tim McDonald said a recovery like this could cost between $10,000 and $20,000. He said his company submits their total cost to Green Site Services, who then passes the total to the state.

While other incidents don’t have as much fanfare, Martin said the recovery of vehicles from state waterbodies is fairly common.

“Unfortunately, this is not an unusual situation here in New Hampshire,” Martin said. “We do have a number of vehicles or snowmobiles that go through the ice on an annual basis. This one had more public attention than normal, but we’re always happy when vehicles can be removed from the bottom of the water.”