"We now know more about lead than we did 50 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago," Doyle said. "And it's just something that to continue to add more lead without a plan to clean it up, it just has to be addressed."
Original post: The fate of the Chabot Gun Club, located in Anthony Chabot Regional Park in Castro Valley, could be decided Tuesday by the board of the East Bay Regional Park District.
Park officials want to close the popular shooting range due to years of lead accumulation.
Park district spokeswoman Carolyn Jones says the amount of lead from ammunition shells is now becoming a health risk for park users and wildlife. Lead poisoning can cause significant neurological damage in humans.
“Our priority is to protect these open spaces as much as possible for people who want some peace and quiet and want to be with nature,” says Jones. “We want to save these open spaces for wildlife.”
She also says the noise level from the shooting range has been a problem for years for people who live in nearby neighborhoods.
The Chabot Gun Club has operated in the park for more than 50 years and gets close to 50,000 users a year. The majority are recreational shooters, according to a park report.
Chabot Gun Club president Dennis Staats does not deny the presence of lead in the area, but he says the park's figures are overblown. Staats says the range is currently in compliance with federal lead standards. And he says it provides useful firearm training, practice and safety education for the community.
“The park district exists to provide a service to the public,” says Staats. “And that service is, of course, preservation of lands and keeping things in their natural state, but there's also the service of recreation.”
The club has proposed an environmental stewardship plan, but park officials say cleanup efforts are unaffordable. The park estimates lead cleanup could cost anywhere from $6.5 million to $20 million.
Other Bay Area gun clubs have run into similar problems. Last year, the Pacific Rod and Gun Club in San Francisco shuttered to clean up 80 years’ worth of shotgun pellets and clay pigeons at Lake Merced. The cost for the cleanup, paid for with public funds, was more than $22 million.
Staats says the Chabot Gun Club is one of 20 remaining in the Bay Area. But he says closing the range would be a big blow to the shooting community since it provides nearly a quarter of shooting positions in the area.
EBRPD's Jones says the call to close down the gun club is not a judgment on shooting as a recreational activity. She says the club has a perfect safety record, and its relationship with the park district has been good.
“If there was a cheap and easy way to deal with these issues, I think everyone would,” says Jones. “Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be.”
If the board votes to shut the range, the park would give the gun club six months to wind down operations.
