Except translation, this story has not been edited by achinews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.
A car that has been submerged in an Alberta lake for almost a year has finally been pulled from the water.
The recovery took place at Floatingstone Lake in St. Paul on Tuesday.
“I’m quite happy that the car is finally out of the water,” said one of the residents of the area, Roland Letendre, who has been working for months to get rid of the vehicle.
Letendre came upon the underwater Mazda in a shallower area of the lake last spring. RCMP told Global News that the car went through the ice on November 26, 2023, while its occupants were ice fishing.
Concerned about the environmental impact the car was having on the lake, its habitat and the people who use the water, Letendre has been working since spring to remove it.
Letendre contacted officials from the county, the province, fish and wildlife, and the RCMP. He got the runaround.
In a statement to Global News earlier this month, Alberta Forestry and Parks said it was working on a plan to remove the car from the lake.
On Tuesday, Letendre said he drove by the lake and saw several vehicles and a tow truck at the boat launch.
“They were already on the lake. So I put the boat in the water and went over there and I was watching them,” he said Thursday morning.
Letendre said recovery crews used airbags to lift the vehicle off the bottom of the lake, flipped it and then towed it with two boats back to the boat launch.
“It was a very slow pace. You could walk faster than they were pulling,” he said. “It came out really well.”
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Letendre said the vehicle, which he originally thought was yellow, was actually white. It came out of the water covered in algae.
“The car was full of manure,” he said. “There was stuff hanging from the mirror. It looked like algae – something you’d see in an ocean photography film. “
Letendre praised the team that coordinated the extraction, calling it “reprehensible.”
“I was very pleased to see him out. It’s been a long road.”
Global News has reached out to Alberta Forestry and Parks for an update on the vehicle’s recovery and will update this story if a response is received.
& copy 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
(Except translation, this story has not been edited by achinews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
source link https://globalnews.ca/news/10764393/alberta-sumberged-car-removed-floatingstone-lake/