The money bundles could be very well persevered for a number of years, even more than a decade, in a submerged bag or in silt, depending on a few different factors, like silt composition, temperature, etc.  I consider it likely (my opinion) that the money sat in a bag at the bottom of the Columbia for many years until until it was placed on the river bank by human intervention (dredging).

Human bodies (deceased) are nearly weightless underwater and they can easily be moved by currents.  It's not unusual for the bodies of drowning victims to be recovered many miles downstream from where they drowned.  I've effortlessly moved pieces of wood underwater that weigh close to 100 pounds on dry land.  the bag and money would fall under this category as I believe it would not take much current to move them once they were submerged.   

This is a follow up of my post above.

I don't know exactly what is written in "Skyjack" about Kaye mentioning human intervention, but his very own website states the following.

"we can speculate that he must have had some human interaction that could have eventually led to the money being buried on Tena Bar. How the Cooper bundles came to be buried where they were remains as big a mystery as who D.B. Cooper was."

Speculate: form a theory or conjecture about a subject without firm evidence.

Kaye never comes out and says it has to be this option, or shift it into the best option. books are often inaccurate. we see this with "Into The Blast" which is full of inaccuracies. not to mention the multiple versions.

The money and the plane are obviously connected. it doesn't necessarily have to fly over T-Bar in order to end up there. the path is upstream from the find. common sense points to it getting there somewhere upstream. when the FBI's lab clearly states the money was submerged with evidence of the Columbia in it. I can't see a plant connecting the evidence. money by water. missing body possibly near water. enough said?

The path could be off as R99 has claimed. I don't know enough to dismiss his theory, but he is working hard to find answers. something people wish to harp on him about. his efforts exceed common research I can tell you that much. they also go above simple website searches, or anything done online. I value his opinion just as the rest of the members on here.

R99's credentials exceed the ones going against him. his knowledge in this area are far more advanced than most. can he be wrong? sure he can, but I'm not going to ridicule him, and attack him personally for speaking out. 

Shutter...

Dredging would count as non-natural means, as well.  Non-natural doesn't have to mean it was planted.

If Cooper was a "no pull", he would have impacted the water at about 100 mph.  This would have expelled the air from his lungs making him negatively buoyant.  Being about 6 feet tall and weighing about 180 pounds, he probably had a low body fat percentage, making him even less buoyant (fat floats, muscle is about 3 times as dense and tends to sink).  I'm not sure if his chutes were negatively buoyant, but I suspect they were after being water logged, so I think he would have sank rather quickly.

Some bodies surface after a couple days because the decaying process produces gases which gather in the abdominal cavity.  Some of the reasons this may not occur are:

• Perforation of the abdominal cavity
  Temperature of the water
  Depth of the water

The money bag could have become separated from Cooper when he exited the aircraft, when (if) he pulled is chute, when (if) he impacted the water, or some time after being submerged with Coopers remains.

Or the money bag could have remained attached to Cooper's remains and remained there along with about $195,000 after some of the money was dredged and placed on the river bank.

Let me correct your speed if Cooper was a no pull.  That speed would be 180+ MPH after approximately a 10,000 foot free fall.  The total "package" (Cooper and his clothing, parachute(s), money bag, and anything else he had tied to himself) would weight approximately 225 pounds or maybe slightly more.

Perhaps Georger can elaborate on this specific point, but the money at Tina Bar appears to have been found about 10-12 feet above sea level with the Columbia River surface nominally being about 5-7 feet above sea level.  Hopefully, Georger can decipher some of his charts to determine the approximate surface level on the evening of the hijacking.  Basically, the water level had to be about 10-12 feet for the delivery of the money to the location where it was found at Tina Bar.  It is also unlikely that Cooper landed at Tina Bar since that location has a relatively large daily (year round) population of fishermen and others and the body and money would surely have been noticed within a very short time.

Tom Kaye discusses on his web site a packet of money that has obvious signs of being "torqued", or the bills rotated laterally with respect to each other.  That packet of money would have had to be constrained on its bottom and exposed to a water flow for that to have happened.  While that could have happened at Tina Bar, it is unlikely to have done so for the same reasons stated earlier.  Consequently, the money was apparently exposed to water flow elsewhere and for some length of time.

From the above, plus other considerations, it appears that Cooper was a no pull who landed on relatively solid ground very close to the river's edge.

Cooper was wearing a rain coat and maybe, according to one witness, long johns.  The parachute equipment he had on was essentially impervious to even salt water.  This suggests that after being de-fleshed, the major bones from the shoulders to the pelvis would still be constrained by the parachute equipment and Cooper's clothing.  So there remains the possibility that some remains of Cooper and/or his parachute equipment could still exist in the Tina Bar area, especially if he landed in one of the notorious briar patches in such places as Caterpillar Island.

Tom Kaye discusses on his web site a packet of money that has obvious signs of being "torqued", or the bills rotated laterally with respect to each other

Could this also apply to a no pull hard landing causing disruption of the entire package of bills?
Could this also apply for the bills being soaked and pushed during the leveling of the spoil?

It seems to me that it could also be like what occurs in shipping when things are tied down they still shift with movement of the vehicle. the money is locked in the bag, but could still shift in movement? if they were in that position for several years, they become bonded in that form?

Some things I don't understand here. how high was the spoils? according to Google Distance map the money is about 92 feet from the edge of the north spoil. what type of machinery moved this sand? 50 yards seems to be marking the center of the spoil. have you ever watched a pile of dirt being moved, or leveled. I see it often on job sites.

That is a huge amount of sand. a typical dump truck holds about 7 cubic yards. that's over 13,000 truck loads. Google distance is reporting the spoils at around 460 feet, or 153 yards wide. I can base it on surrounding objects still in place from the photo in 74.

The calculator is pretty accurate. I actually used it once to measure something in reference to an up coming job several years ago.