Crashed Helicopter Now Out Of Lake That Feeds Drinking Water To Everett & Snohomish County

Good news today from Snohomish PUD and Everett Public Works as a helicopter that crashed into a lake that feeds into the drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people in Everett and Snohomish County has been recovered.

– On Wednesday, Nov. 9, a private helicopter that sank in Copper Lake, a tributary to Spada Reservoir, was removed without incident.

Officials from the Washington Department of Natural Resources, Washington Department of Ecology, City of Everett Public Works, and the Snohomish County PUD were onsite to observe the removal and monitor any impacts to water quality. Everett assures there has been no impact to drinking water quality.

“It was a tremendous multi-agency effort that resulted in the safe removal of the helicopter from Copper Lake,” said Jeff Marrs, Everett’s operations superintendent. “We are pleased that the potential risk to our water quality has been removed, and grateful for our partners’ efforts in ensuring that this was completed without incident.”

The removal operation was launched from the PUD’s helipad located at the Jackson Powerhouse. Operations were conducted by Global Diving and Salvage, a privately contracted dive operation and Northwest Helicopters, a privately contracted helicopter operator. They utilized two helicopters, including a Blackhawk, and a dive team to safely extract the sunken helicopter from the lake and transport it to the PUD’s helipad where it was loaded on to a trailer. City of Everett and PUD employees were onsite at the helipad to inspect the helicopter for any possible leakage. Washington Department of Ecology and Department of Natural Resources staff monitored the recovery at Copper Lake. All costs associated with the recovery were covered by the responsible party.

To learn more about Everett’s water quality, visit everettwa.gov/waterquality.