DENVER — The South Platte River through Denver has become a watery graveyard for vehicles this summer, but that is about to change.
For the past six weeks, a small stretch of the river near West Florida Avenue has been eye catching for all the wrong reasons.
“When I came across this morning it reminded me of a Mafia drop point,” said Joe Wilson, who rides the trail regularly. “I mean every day you come by and there’s more abandoned vehicles in the river.”
“It’s really confusing,” said Shane Mangold, who works in the area. “I have no idea how they got there.”
Kristin Owsley knows more than most on-lookers. The latest addition to the river, a 1999 Jeep Cherokee that turned up last weekend, became her problem Sunday morning.
“It’s devastating,” Owsley said. “At 6 a.m. a cop knocked on the door, which is scary anyway. The officer is like, ‘Do you have a 1999 Jeep Cherokee?’
“‘Yeah.’
“‘It’s in the middle of the Platte River.’
“‘What?’
“It’s my daughter’s vehicle so of course it scared me to death.”
Owsley soon learned her daughter’s car had been stolen in the Capitol Hill neighborhood and showed up in the water hours later.
“(The officer) said they’ve had a lot of problems with vehicles being run down the hill in the Platte River lately,” Owsley said.
According to Denver Fire, just because the cars keep piling up doesn’t mean the problem is growing.
Public Information Officer Melissa Taylor said it hasn’t seen a spike in vehicles in the river. She said the difference is that once dive teams have checked for victims, the high water has prevented crews from removing the vehicle.
“Once we’ve cleared the vehicle, getting the vehicle out is not a priority as soon as it becomes a nonlife safety incident,” Taylor said. “What’s preventing us from getting these out is the fact that we have to put divers in to actually hook the tow trucks up.”
With river levels finally falling, Denver Fire is looking to remove the cars this week. Regardless, Owsley said it won’t remove the pain and frustration the criminals have caused.
“I know it’s just a car but it affects our lives greatly,” Owsley said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
Denver Fire said one of the most frequent questions about the abandoned vehicles is in regards to the impact they might have on the ecology of the river.
Taylor said the vehicles don’t leak much gas or oil and the environmental impact doesn’t outweigh the risk of calling in a dive team while the water is high.