Officials once feared that a long-sunken tugboat at the bottom of a Lake Champlain could be a looming environmental disaster.
For the past week, commercial divers braved the depths of the lake to try to find out whether the tug still had thousands of gallons of diesel fuel aboard.
The truth was revealed Tuesday: The tug’s tanks contained no diesel fuel at all, though a small amount of lubricating oil was found trapped within the wreck’s high spots.
The William H. McAllister sank in 1963 and represents the last significant commercial shipwreck on the 120-mile lake.