Crews working to pull cars from the Detroit River in Sandwich Town

Crews are working to pull cars from the Detroit River in the city's west end.

Windsor's Harbour Master Peter Berry says it's been known for years that cars have been disposed of at the slip near Mill Street and Russell Street"in unknown numbers."

"It's been anywhere from 10 to 14 cars. What we're finding today, there's a lot more than we even anticipated," he said.

The murky depths of Detroit River havelong been known as a dumping ground for everything from guns to bottles dating back to the Prohibition Era.

A private company is doing the work on behalf of aproperty owner, who wants the cars removed, Berry said. Divers are in the river as part of the operation.

Some of the vehicles pulled from the mudgo back decades, but some are as new as 2021, Berry said.

"We have a Volkswagen Rabbit, we have a Cadillac, we have a couple of pickup trucks, a construction trailer. There's an old [Chevrolet] Caprice Classic here. So we've got some really interesting cars but what's interesting about it is we don't do this often."

Berry says it's an opportunity to clean the river and get the land clean for the developer but also to "maybe close some cases with the police as they look at this."

The Port Authority says it will work with the police to identify the vehicles. The cars are being checked for guns or other signs of illegal activity.

Port Authority representatives are on site to make sure there areno environmental impacts from fluids or batteries, Berry added.

"To date,we've had nothing happen relative to the pollution," Berry said. "You see a lot of black in the water. That's rotted vegetation over the past decades that's being pulled through the mud."

The work began around 8 a.m. and will continue to tomorrow.