Tugboat Carrying Diesel Fuel Sinks In Columbia River Near Umatilla Above McNary Dam

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Crews from multiple state agencies responded Monday to reports of a 38-foot tugboat that sank in the Columbia River.

According to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, the tugboat reportedly had 750 gallons of diesel on board.

Divers were able to locate the fuel hatch and determine that fuel was not actively leaking out of the hatch, according to Laura Gleim with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

The tugboat was completely submerged 10 miles upriver of McNary Dam near Umatilla, Oregon.

DEQ said Sunday’s strong wind gusts apparently blew the boat away from where it was moored, pushing it a quarter-mile upriver.

No one was on board and no injuries were reported.

The DEQ, along with crews and divers from the Washington Department of Ecology and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency were on the site late Monday afternoon.

NOTE: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of a name and to clarify the status of the fuel on board.

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The president just unraveled years of work on tribal rights, salmon and clean energy. So what happens next?

Less than two years ago, the administration of President Joe Biden announced what tribal leaders hailed as an unprecedented commitment to the Native tribes whose ways of life had been devastated by federal dam-building along the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest.

The deal, which took two years to negotiate, halted decades of lawsuits over the harm federal dams had caused to the salmon that had sustained those tribes culturally and economically for thousands of years. To enable the removal of four hydroelectric dams considered especially harmful to salmon, the government promised to invest billions of dollars in alternative energy sources to be created by the tribes.

This story comes to you from Oregon Public Broadcasting and the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.