After more than a decade of taming Japanese Knotweed, the Allegheny Land Trust has restored Sycamore Island on the Allegheny River to a native floodplain forest ecological habitat. Spiny soft-shelled turtles swim and bass spawn on its shores. Then last winter, someone tied up and abandoned a motorized recreational boat made of fiberglass on the main channel side of the island.
The Land Trust alerted the Blawnox police and the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission right away. Months later, the boat is still stuck, beached on the shore. All of the authorities have been “very responsive,” according to Caitlin McCalla, vice president of stewardship at the Allegheny Land Trust. “But everyone that I spoke to they all had the same response of, ‘Yeah, this happens, and there’s really not a lot we can do about it. It’s really difficult.’”
There are hundreds of abandoned boats in Pennsylvania, including 14 on the rivers in the Pittsburgh area, according to Three Rivers Waterkeeper, which regularly surveys the local rivers. That doesn’t include boats that have sunk and the many left in back lots or on the side of the road. Unlike calling a towing company to take a car to a pound at the owner’s expense, the process for removing these boats can take months, is legally complex, expensive and risky.
But a new state law signed by Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro last month streamlines this process, making it easier for law enforcement to remove the abandoned and derelict boats sitting on the side of the road and sinking in rivers and lakes.
The new law defines what an abandoned or derelict vessel is and when legal action can start or when the reclamation process can begin. “If a boat becomes an environmental hazard or a public hazard, law enforcement entities or rescue crews or the Fish and Boat Commission can take action to prevent that from becoming worse without worrying about liability or other issues that may be associated with taking action on private property,” said Mark Sweppenhiser, director of boating at the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, the agency that oversees this process.
Some legal teeth
The typical abandoned boat would be “a mid-size, around 30 foot, fiberglass, inboard motor-powered boat in disrepair from the ‘80s,” according to Hannah Hohman, environmental steward at Three Rivers Waterkeeper. They’ve often been found tied up and taking on water on the North Shore, although the bulk of abandoned boats are found on the land in streets around Pittsburgh, according to Hohman.
“When I think about a boat that is at the highest risk of being abandoned, I think of a free fiberglass houseboat on Facebook marketplace,” Hohman said. “If it is too good to be true, it probably is. People will acquire these boats thinking ‘I got a great deal, I got a free boat.’”
These fiberglass boats with inboard motors are difficult and expensive to repair and have little or no salvage value. Some sit for months before someone claims them and many sit until they start sinking or become unsafe. Many of these leak fuel, oil and other fluids. Paint, foam insulation and other materials begin to break down, leaching into the water. Often they’re poorly tied off and break free drifting into river traffic and threatening dams and bridges. Many are left behind near crowded spaces, like the North Shore, creating a public safety hazard.
Before this law, “there was no good way for law enforcement officers to be able to take those steps to take ownership of that boat and then be able to dispose of it properly,” said Captain Evan Clark, waterkeeper at Three Rivers Waterkeeper. “That’s been the barrier.”
After a boat is found abandoned or derelict, local law enforcement works with the Fish and Boat Commission to find and notify the owner. The previous process could take up to a year before ownership could be transferred. And then, the municipality or the Allegheny Land Trust or whoever, would gain ownership of the abandoned boat and would be able to get rid of the boat — but on their own dime.
Boats are registered and have a hull identification number like a VIN number on a car that tracks the boat back to an owner. But finding an owner can be difficult — owners can be deceased or claim to have sold the boat to someone else. These boats get stuck in a legal limbo, putting anyone who tries to remove them at a liability risk.
The new law gives municipalities and local law enforcement the authority to remove these boats and shortens the timeline from discovery to disposal — using “essentially the same process as abandoned vehicles,” according to Sweppenhiser. The process of tracking down the owner went from several months to 30 days. After they’re notified, owners have 14 days to remove their boat. If they don’t do anything about it, they face stiff fines and get the bill for its removal.
After 30 days, a salvage company can come in and either they can take possession of the title and resell it or take it up to the landfill. “That’s all expense and someone’s got to pay for all that and most times that’s going to come out of the general budgets of whoever has the responsibility for getting rid of that watercraft.” Local law enforcement can now fine the owner and send along the bill for the cost of the boat’s removal and disposal.
“This isn’t free, ‘just dump it because I can’t afford to get rid of it or I don’t want to pay to get it’,” said Sweppenhiser. “This is now a piece of legislation that has some teeth in it to allow the municipalities to go back after some of these delinquent owners.”
A first step
On Sycamore Island, people have been reporting the smell of gasoline and reports of “fluids leaking” from the abandoned boat over the past few weeks. And on the back channel of the island, a second boat has been stranded. The Land Trust is following up with authorities and hope this new law will speed things up.
Even with a sped-up process removing these boats is expensive. It can cost anywhere from $500 to dump a mid-size boat in a landfill, to tens of thousands of dollars to pull a large sunken boat from the river and dispose of it. Because these fiberglass boats have little to no resell value, there’s work to be done to incentivize owners to dispose of their old boats properly and for municipalities to invest in this problem.
The Fish and Boat Commission is working with a program at Duquesne University to find new routes for abandoned boats besides ending up in a landfill.
“If we can find some private enterprises who are willing to come out and salvage these boats and they can make money on these watercraft, or do an unwanted vessel turn-in program,” said Sweppenhiser. “They can take these watercraft and they can build a business model out of it.”
The new law goes into effect in January. For those at the head of the issue, it’s “a huge step in the right direction,” Hohman said.
