Wednesday August 13, 2025
FOX 40 —
For decades, abandoned vessels and vehicles in the Sacramento River have been an issue for law enforcement.
From recreation to agriculture, the river is a life source for the Sacramento region. In just a few months, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office will get new equipment dedicated to helping clean it.
The sheriff’s office covers more than 300 miles of waterways in Sacramento County and the to-do list for the marine enforcement detail team is rarely short. Beyond patrols and rescues, the team is regularly locating abandoned vessels and cars.
“The list keeps growing. Week by week, day by day, year by year,” Sgt. Sam Flores said.
At least a hundred vessels and cars are on the units’ radar currently. Where one is found, more are usually located in the same general radius, each one adding to waterway pollution day after day.
“Our main focus for the new boat is to clean up the waterways. It’s a resource for the community for drinking water,” Sgt. Sam Flores said. “Right now, with these sunken boats here and the sunken vehicles there’s leakage, there’s gas leaks, there’s oil leaks. Who knows what else is coming out of some of these old vehicles and vessels. To clean these out and get these out of here to clean up the water is just going to be a tremendous benefit to the community of Sacramento.”
Getting boats and cars out of the Sacramento and American Rivers is rarely a quick or easy job.
However, it may get easier with a new, 38-foot-long custom catamaran patrol vessel being built for the sheriff’s office by Moose Boats. The company building the boat has a track record of working with other agencies, including San Francisco and Oakland PD, NYPD and the Boston Fire Department.
“Our latest, newest boat, I would say, is probably about 10 years old, so this is definitely upgraded, much-needed technology,” Sgt. Flores said.
The M2 Moose Boat will be the newest and largest boat in the sheriff’s fleet, equipped with several new amenities, including improved sonar and more space.
“Some of our missions are eight or nine hours and instead of going back and forth to shore to get equipment and stuff like that, we’ll have it all there and will be able to stay for long periods of time,” Sgt. Flores said.
Even with how massive the boat will be, Sgt. Flores said it will be able to get into areas their current boats are not equipped with changing when and where divers can respond to.
“The new boat also has about 18 inches of drag, which means that we can go further upriver into shallow water which right now we can’t do this with these outport engines, so we’ll be able to cover a lot more of the river,” Sgt. Flores said.
The responsibility to remove boats and cars from local waterways falls primarily on the sheriff’s office but the department doesn’t always have the resources for each mission.
“When we currently dive, we use other resources such as Yolo County, Sacramento rangers, Walnut Grove’s fire boat, and the Sacramento Police Department. We’re relying on them, for their resources to go on our time,” Sgt. Flores said.
This boat is expected to relieve a lot of coordination efforts so the sheriff’s office can remove abandoned vessels and cars on their timeline. Once the boat arrives in December, training with it will begin right away.
“Just last week or two weeks ago, there was a vehicle launching a kayak off of the Howe River access. He lost control of his vehicle, went into the river, floated downstream about a mile or so,” Sgt. Flores said. “This vessel right here would not be able to get up there and get to it, so we had to rely on contacting the rangers and using their boat which then shortens their staff, or they have to pay for overtime.”
Money for the new boat is coming from state grant funding. SB 108, the Budget Act of 2024, includes a $1 million dollar grant for the sheriff’s office solely to fund removal of vessels and vehicles in the Sacramento River.