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New Issue For Wallingford Gun Range: Lead In Water(Hartford Courant, The (CT) (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Aug. 13--For more than 45 years, with the blessing of the town, rifle fire from the Blue Trail Range has been zipping across the Ulbrich Reservoir and smacking into a slope on the east side of the pond. The arrangement is the centerpiece of a 1961 agreement in which the Lyman family, owners of the range, deeded the land for the reservoir to the town and retained the right to shoot onto it. The deal attracted very little attention from regulators or area residents -- until now. Enraged by a separate issue -- bullets striking houses and properties about 1 mile east of the range in Durham -- Pasquale "Pat" DiNatale, a Durham homeowner, has peppered state environmental and health officials with e-mails about lead deposits from the bullets, contending that they pose a health hazard. Water tests in the spring showed traces of lead in a stream that flows by the range and in one spot in the Ulbrich, at the shoreline below the lead deposits. As a result, the state Department of Public Health "strongly" recommended to the town's water division that it hire a consultant to "conduct an extensive environmental evaluation of the Ulbrich Reservoir and its watershed ... to fully characterize any actual or potential lead pollution threat." The agency also requested more frequent testing. The state Department of Environmental Protection has also expressed concerns. No lead has been found in the main body of the Ulbrich or anywhere else in the reservoir system, and the water is safe to drink, local and state officials said. But the situation has raised questions about how serious the future environmental threat could be, and who ultimately would be responsible for cleaning it up and paying the bill. Town and state officials appear to have been caught off-guard by the lead contamination issue, which arose amid a recent crop of complaints that bullets from the Blue Trail Range were hitting land in TriMountain State Park across the reservoir. Periodically over the past 15 years, several homes and properties in the Tri-Mountain Road area of Durham, east of the park, have been struck by bullets. The last strike occurred on Memorial Day, when a .223-caliber bullet broke through the kitchen window of a home on Tri-Mountain Road. A state police investigation is underway, and no conclusion about the source of the bullets has been announced. The range has ceased most of its operations during the probe, which began in early May. It is now looking to reopen its 100-yard rifle range but has agreed that its 200-yard range -- the source of the bullets that have zipped across the reservoir since the early 1960s -- would remain closed to rifle fire. "This has been under the radar because the town doesn't want to have to deal with a toxic-waste dump near a reservoir, and the state didn't even know where TriMountain State Park was," contended DiNatale, who has been an outspoken critic of the range and whose home is one of several that have been hit by bullets. Directly across the reservoir from the Blue Trail Range stand two "backstops" -- barren patches of rocky ground, perhaps an acre in all, that have been shaved clean of foliage by bullets. The gray stones are stained with the blue tinge of smeared lead. The ground jingles underfoot from the accumulation of decades of spent lead and copper bullet jackets. The range is owned by David Lyman, whose family operates a popular orchard and golf course in Middlefield, as well as the Lyman Gun Sight Co., also in Middlefield. The range has had permission to fire across the reservoir since the 1961 agreement that gave the town the land to build the reservoir. It's unclear whether any lead from these shooting backstops -- one of which is adjacent to state park land -- has gotten into the reservoir. But a June 6 town water department test of a stream that runs off the range itself and feeds into the reservoir showed what one environmental expert called an "alarmingly high" level of lead. What To Do The lead is not considered an immediate health threat to the 14,000 homes, schools and businesses that use the town's water supply. While tests along the shoreline and in streams running into Ulbrich Reservoir have found lead, it is not showing up in the middle of the reservoir, or in water pumped into nearby Pistapaug Pond, from which it is treated and sent to homes, businesses and public buildings. It is also not present in the town's treatment plant or at the tap, Darrell Smith, an official at the state Department of Public Health, said last week. But the tests prompted Smith to write a letter "strongly" recommending that Wallingford hire a consultant to conduct an "extensive environmental evaluation" of the reservoir and its 857-acre watershed to determine any actual or potential threat from lead pollution. In the letter, he said that the higher results in tests conducted after rainfall suggest that "precipitation potentially plays a role in the transportation of lead towards Ulbrich Reservoir." George Adair, Wallingford's director of public utilities, said officials are considering how to respond to the health department recommendation. "We're figuring out the scope of the study, the cost of the consultant, how it would be done -- all of that," he said last week. He said his department will immediately begin the more-frequent, quarterly testing requested by the health department. Adair said that he was not surprised by the most recent test results and that the town had found a similar pattern of low levels of lead around the reservoir the last time tests were conducted 15 years ago. Asked if he was concerned about the continued operation of the range, Adair, who has been with the town just two years, deferred judgment. "I'm still forming a view on the subject myself," he said. Wallingford town Councilman Vincenzo DiNatale -- a nephew of Pat DiNatale -- said council members plan to discuss the lead at their Aug. 19 meeting, when they will get an update from Adair and the water division. He said he was at a loss to explain why this problem is only surfacing now, 47 years after the 1961 agreement. Town officials are becoming increasingly concerned about the possibility of a major expense for cleanup, though no one has yet established who would be liable, he said. "If we don't deal with this now," he said, "it's going to be in front of us again -- and it's going to be an even bigger problem." David Lyman's lawyers have a different view. Attorney Craig Fishbein of Wallingford said that there has been shooting on this land in one form or another since before World War II, and that lead deposits have never caused a health hazard. "The Ulbrich was built on top of a shooting range -- on top of lead, basically," he said. "That's where the 600-yard targets used to be. Those targets were abandoned by the Lyman Gun Sight Co. in 1961. Ever since, the reservoirs have been providing clean drinking water to the town." He added: "There are officials in town who have been around a long time. It just seems that when Pat DiNatale says something, people react." Testing For Lead Even tiny amounts of lead can cause serious health problems, disrupting cognitive development in children and causing neurological and other problems in adults. Lead also can hurt waterfowl and other wildlife, which can ingest lead shot from shotguns, bullet fragments and lead deposited in the sediments at the bottom of streams and lakes. (The U.S. banned lead shot for waterfowl hunting in 1991, and Canada banned it entirely in 1999.) The lead in bullets tends to stay on the ground -- in some cases for hundreds of years. Smith, of the state health department, said the monitoring data from Ulbrich suggest that the lead in the hillside has not moved into the reservoir. But lead can migrate through the environment under the right conditions. Tiny particles of lead left from bullets striking a stone can more easily wash away or bind with the soil. Acidic rain and soil -- common throughout New England -- can break the metal down into a more mobile form that could be washed into the soil and eventually into the water. Tests done in May and June by the Wallingford Department of Public Utilities showed lead in the water at several sites, including in the east side of the reservoir near the bullet backstops; in a stream running into the reservoir from the Blue Trail Range property, on the northwest edge; and in two streams running into the south end of the reservoir. The Ulbrich Reservoir is one of three ponds that supply water to the town. Its water is pumped into Pistapaug Pond and from there to a treatment plant and out to homes and businesses. Tests by the town over the years show no evidence of lead entering the water treatment plant. But tests this spring detected the metal after rainstorms, possibly stirred up in soil or sediment washing toward the reservoir. In the absence of rain, a test on May 20 found no detectable levels of lead anywhere. The highest reading, 68 parts per billion, showed up June 6 after a half-inch of rain in the stream that runs off the Blue Trail Range. According to the state health department, that is the only sample that shows a level above the 50 parts per billion state limit for untreated water. "That's an alarmingly high number for a body of water anywhere in the United States," said Professor Andrew Friedland, chairman of the environmental studies department at Dartmouth College. "I haven't seen any numbers in natural settings anywhere close to that." He said the test could have been an aberration caused by someone disturbing the sediment. "Even if it was an error in collection," he added, "it could show the potential for what [lead] could be mobilized if deer or people are walking through the stream. "[It's] a very bad idea to put large quantities of [lead] into the environment," Friedland said. "If you have a shooting range, it should be away from water." Another expert also questioned the arrangement. "Why would you want to do that?" echoed professor Joel Schwartz of the Harvard School of Public Health, who has researched the health effects of lead and sources of exposure to lead. "It seems like a needless hazard to have that being done right by the drinking water supply." The Agreement The range began as part of the Lyman Gun Sight Co., which was founded in 1878 and has produced a catalog of widely used products. According to a range website, Winchester Arms used the range for military weaponry test firing during World War II. The Lyman family gave land to the town for the reservoir in a deal that allowed them to continue firing from the range into the hillside on the opposite shore. As part of the agreement, the town would be obligated to buy the range for $90,000 if the range is found by a state or municipal agency to be causing a safety or public-health threat in connection with the reservoir. "What happens if [range owner David Lyman] walks away from the business?" asked Vincenzo DiNatale. "Are we left holding the bag?" It seems unlikely that such an agreement would be made today. "Certainly, the information is different today than it was 40 years ago, in terms of land use, environmental, legal and real estate issues, and in terms of what you'd want to be bound to," said Janis Small, Wallingford's town attorney. Smith, from the state health department, said anyone building a reservoir today would have to have their plans vetted by the state health department. Whether a gun range could be situated nearby would depend on the details. Dennis Schain, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said that state and federal laws do not require ranges to remove lead from the range itself while they are operating. The DEP encourages ranges "to implement best management practices that minimize the release of lead into the environment," he added. Contact David Funkhouser at [email protected]. For more about lead cleanup at shooting ranges, visit at www. courant.com/bullets To see more of The Hartford Courant, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.courant.com/. Copyright (c) 2008, The Hartford Courant, Conn. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |