Two bird rental e-scooters lay stuck in the mud along the riverbank near the Tower Bridge, just feet from the water.
It’s a scene river cleanup volunteers say they encounter far more often than most Sacramento residents may realize.
Sacramento’s current rental e-scooter market is shared by Bird and Lime. Most rental scooters are located in Downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. While the scooters are typically used for short-distance travel, some are abandoned or even intentionally dumped in waterways.
Crystal Tobias is a longtime river cleanup volunteer in the Sacramento region. She said e-scooters have become a recurring problem during river cleanups she’s participated in.
“Oh, dozens and dozens of them,” Tobias said. “Maybe over a hundred. It’s every waterway… Steelhead Creek, Arcade Creek, the American River, Discovery Park. It’s just rampant.”
Tobias said scooters often become buried in mud or tangled in plants in the water. She said this makes the removal difficult and some require winches to pull them free.
“When somebody dumps a scooter, it’s not just the scooter,” she said. “It’s all of the interior workings that start to deteriorate and go into the water.”
She said lithium-ion batteries attached to e-scooters and other components contribute to water pollution. She says this is especially a concern in Sacramento’s waterways that are salmon and steelhead habitats.
“This is our drinking water. This is water we recreate in,” Tobias said. “This water is our life.”
Who is responsible for the cleanup?
According to the City of Sacramento, scooter retrieval is not the city’s responsibility.
Gabby Miller, a city spokesperson, told CapRadio that the city does not remove scooters from waterways and leaves cleanup and retrieval to the companies.
Lime, in a statement sent to CapRadio after being asked for an interview, said it removes scooters that end up in waterways and recently recovered multiple near the Tower Bridge.
“These scooters only became visible at the end of last week as the river level lowered; yesterday provided our team with the first safe opportunity to recover them,” according to Lime.
Four rental e-scooters were pulled from the water in Sacramento by the rental company Lime on Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2026.Photo courtesy of Lime
“At Lime, we take pride in working to prevent vehicles from ending up in the water and retrieving them promptly in the rare cases that happen. The vast majority of our riders and Sacramento residents would never vandalize an e-scooter, and we’ve seen these incidents decrease over time as we implement preventative strategies and the community embraces our vehicles as essential transportation infrastructure. Unfortunately, some bad apples do occasionally vandalize our fleet in this way.”
According to Lime’s written response, this was a more frequent issue during the first couple of years of their coming to the area. Since then, they said they have seen less.
“We’ve reached out to several local waterway cleanup organizations in Sacramento, and we look forward to hopefully working with them on future prevention and cleanup efforts,” a company spokesperson wrote.
Rosenthal Shiraz, a spokesperson for Bird, said the company pulls out scooters when they end up in rivers or restricted areas.
“We do get reports of scooters that get thrown into the rivers and the waterways of Sacramento,” said Shiraz. “Our operations team does retrieve those vehicles when we get reports of them.”
Shiraz said Bird’s scooters are tracked with GPS and an alert is triggered when they become submerged. She said the company typically responds to reports through Sacramento’s 311 system, though recovery of submerged scooters can take longer.
“For a submerged vehicle, it requires a little bit more equipment and time,” Shiraz said. “That’ll take anywhere between 24 to 48 hours to retrieve.”
Bird said it also uses geofencing technology near waterways to slow scooters to an “uncomfortable” speed if riders enter restricted zones.
Cleanup volunteers say they’re doing the work
But Tobias said cleanup crews are often the ones removing scooters, and that they typically dispose of them in landfills due to water damage.
“We haul them out and we take them to the landfill,” she said. “They’ve been in the water. You can’t use them again.”
Tobias said she has never seen company retrieval teams at cleanup sites.
“I have never, ever seen a company dive team,” she said. “Nor has the city ever said to us, ‘If you find one of these things, call this number and somebody will come get it.’ That has never happened.”
Sacramento City Councilmember Phil Pluckebaum, whose district includes most of Downtown, said scooters provide real transportation benefits to residents in the city’s core, even if misuse does happen.
“They’re handy mobility devices,” Pluckebaum said. “People are relying on them.”
A Bird and Lime scooter parked and locked up to a bike rack in front of Shake Shack on R Street in Downtown Sacramento on Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2026.Riley Palmer/CapRadio
Pluckebaum said vandalism and improper disposal does happen with the rentals, but said companies should be responsible for managing the full lifecycle of their devices.
“Whether it’s a water quality issue or just a visual blight,” he said, “that’s an important part of being a good corporate steward.”
Pluckebaum said residents who see scooters in waterways should report them through the city’s 311 system.
Rental e-bikes and e-scooters ending up where they are not supposed to be is happening beyond Sacramento. Similar problems have been reported in other cities where shared scooters and e-bikes are available. A recent BBC story reported that rental bikes are being pulled from rivers and canals in cities across England, raising concerns about pollution and cleanup costs.
Tobias says she believes that if the city is going to allow the scooters in the area, there should be more oversight. She says they should hold the companies more accountable and pay attention to who is pulling them out of the water.
“The idea was innovative,” Tobias said. “But in the wrong hands, it’s very detrimental to our environment.”
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