BAYVIEW — Ever since a storm partially submerged a houseboat in Lake Pend Oreille in mid-March, Bayview residents watched as it sunk deeper.

For months, it remained under the surface.

Finally, Thursday, it rose again.

Marc Kalbaugh, a remediation analyst at Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, said the preparations to remove the houseboat were “all the rage” in his department for the last few weeks. 

DEQ officials were made aware of the boat’s condition in July after Timberlake Fire Protection District was called in to assist with a small fuel spill from tanks on the houseboat. A containment boom was placed around the area of the leak.

“It has fuel tanks, so when it partially sinks, wave action will displace some of the fuel from the tanks and it creates a sheen on surface water,” Kalbaugh said. 

Resident Cal Whitfield was living on the dock and said it started sinking about mid-March.

“It had been lifting slightly for a day or two, and all of a sudden just went down,” Whitfield said. 

He saw staff at Scenic Bay Marina try to keep it from going all the way down.    

“I really give kudos to the marina, they had people working on it for a significant amount of time,” Whitfield said. 

The owner of the houseboat is Gavin Eppard, according to records obtained by DEQ. Eppard could not be reached.

At some point over the summer, Kalbaugh said DEQ was alerted the boat sank during a storm. 

“It was sitting at about 55 feet of water and it’s a 52-foot houseboat,” Kalbaugh said.  

DEQ hired First Strike Environmental, which secured a dive team to refloat the boat so it could be removed. 

“The dive team went down and basically used a series of bags to get it to surface and once they had it partially risen, they moved it over to the boat launch where they finished lifting it then they put it on a truck to get it out of the water,” Kalbaugh said. 

DEQ didn't have an estimate of how much fuel was originally in the gas tanks or how much had leaked. No environmental damage was reported.

After the boat was floated to the surface, resident Frank Abbott said the propeller and rudders were cut off after briefly falling off the trailer it was being towed on and to avoid damage to the pavement.

The houseboat’s parts are being salvaged in Bayview. 

DEQ has an emergency account for cases like the houseboat’s fuel leaks because of “imminent environmental health risks,” but DEQ will also be seeking cost recovery from multiple parties, Kalbaugh said.

    Bayview residents noticed that a houseboat owned by Gavin Eppard began to sink in mid-March of this year. Idaho Department of Environmental Quality reported that Timberlake Fire Protection District was called in to assist when there was a fuel leak in July.