The last remaining piece of the HMCS Chaleur, a Cold War-era Canadian Navy minesweeper, was lifted from Little Potato Slough on Thursday morning, concluding a 25-day demolition effort by the U.S. Coast Guard and partner contractors.
The operation, which began in mid-July, cleared more than 400 tons of oil-saturated hull from the Delta waterway, along with 400 gallons of oil products, over 500 feet of contaminated boom, and additional hazardous waste. Crews are now in the final phase of demobilizing from the site.
Submerged since 2021, the Chaleur had become a slow-moving environmental hazard in one of California’s most ecologically fragile and economically important river systems. Its deteriorating Guardstructure leaked oil into a channel that supplies drinking water to Stockton and irrigates vast tracts of farmland across San Joaquin County.
The Coast Guard contracted with Power Engineering Construction of Alameda to lead the dismantling. Using a floating crane, excavator and two material barges, the crew cut the Chaleur into sections underwater and lifted each piece for transportation to a licensed disposal facility.
“This was a success,” said Lt. Cmdr. Mark Leahey, the Coast Guard’s incident commander for the project. “Power Engineering Construction did a fantastic job.”
The vessel’s wooden planks, saturated with residual oil, expelled fuel in warm weather as the timbers expanded. Unlike the nearby Aurora, a 293-foot cruise ship refloated and removed last year, or the 100-foot tug Mazapeta, which was hauled away in January, the Chaleur was too structurally compromised to refloat. Dive crews cut the vessel underwater into large sections, which were then lifted onto a barge for disposal.
Funded by the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, the removal was the final step in a broader cleanup of derelict vessels in Little Potato Slough.
According to the Coast Guard, the North Pacific Fisheries Commission manages this fund around the clock to ensure federal on-scene coordinators can immediately respond to threats, cover containment and cleanup costs, seek natural resource damage assessments, and recover expenses from responsible parties when possible
For the first time in years, the channel is now free of major wrecks. But Leahey emphasized that the Delta remains littered with abandoned vessels.
“There are dozens more wrecks throughout the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta,” he said. “This one just happened to threaten water, wildlife, and people all at once.”
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