Minn. county worker in trouble over sinking plow
(AP) - A Polk County employee faces disciplinary action after the payloader he was driving ended up in the Red Lake River near Crookston.
Polk County Engineer Rich Sanders says Mike Raymond was supposed to be clearing snow out of parking lots.
Instead, he went out to the frozen Red Lake River, where the $200,000 county payloader went through the ice and sank.
A dive team from Moorhead had to be called in to hook chains to the sunken loader. It took six hours to re-hook broken chains, get ice out of the way and get equipment hooked up to finally pull the 15-ton, water logged loader from the river.
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Sanders says the scuba team and extra equipment will cost the county around $9,000. That's not including damage to the loader. Sanders says there's no reason Raymond should have had the loader on the river.
Raymond told the Grand Forks Herald he wanted to make it easier for people who pull fish houses onto the river. He says he happens to have a fish house on the river himself, but says that's not why he wanted to clear the area.
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Information from: KVLY-TV, http://www.valleynewslive.tv
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)