This station wagon has been at the bottom of a Woodbury lake for 30 years

Jun. 30—An invasive-weed specialist hired to help combat a massive algae bloom on Woodbury's Colby Lake last week found a station wagon believed to have been submerged for more than 30 years.

The red Pontiac Safari 6000, which was covered in muck, grime and algae, was found Thursday submerged on the east side of the lake about 30 feet off the shoreline, Cmdr. John Altman of the Woodbury Public Safety Department said.

"This guy is out in his rowboat, and he hits something with his oar, and he looks over, and he's, like, 'Holy buckets, there's a car sitting down there,'" Altman said. "Colby Lake is a long, narrow lake, and it was halfway up the lake."

Police believe the car, which did not have license plates, went in the lake in the early 1990s before houses were built in the area. The last year the Pontiac Safari 6000 was manufactured was 1991.

Aerial images show the car in the lake dating back to 2006, Altman said.

Altman said it's not surprising that the car could have gone undetected this long.

"It's not a lake you would kayak on; you don't swim in this lake," he said. "It's only 11 feet deep."

The station wagon was found resting parallel to the shoreline.

"That's the weird thing," Altman said. "Did it go in and float a little bit and then take a quarter turn and sink? Or was it a winter drive-on and then went through the ice?"

The windows on one side of the car were rolled down, and it was filled with "lots of water and algae and dirt and muck," Altman said.

No human remains were found inside, he said, "but it's been there a long time, so if there were, they wouldn't be there still."

An investigator from the National Insurance Crime Bureau has been called to investigate and locate the station wagon's vehicle identification number, Altman said. "It was just so dirty and corroded that when we pulled it out of the lake, we weren't able to scrape the muck off and get that far," he said.

The car's owner or insurance company could be liable for the retrieval and disposal costs, he said.

Anyone with information about the car is asked to call the Woodbury Public Safety Department at 651-714-3600.