Acadia park rangers putting ‘get the lead out’ into practice

ACADIA NATIONAL PARK – Federal park officials on Mount Desert Island have decided to clean up their act, and as a result some of the surrounding towns will have to decide if they want to follow suit.

The issue being addressed by Acadia officials concerns the environment but is not normally considered a top priority.

The park wants to halt the buildup of lead residue from spent bullets at its outdoor shooting range near Blackwoods Campground.

Because part of the park’s mission is environmental stewardship, officials have decided to phase out the use of lead rounds at the firing range, according to Kevin Cochary, a ranger at Acadia and one of its three firearms instructors.

Instead, rangers will use frangible bullets, which contain no lead but tend to break up more when fired, during training exercises. When on duty, officers will continue to use lead bullets, which tend to have better stopping power, he said.

The park has made the shooting range available for law enforcement training to other nearby agencies, such as for Coast Guard personnel stationed in Southwest Harbor and for police officers working for the surrounding towns. But if other agencies want to continue to use the park’s firing range, Cochary said, they also will have to train with frangible bullets, which are more expensive.

“As of October, we have to switch to a frangible round,” Cochary said Friday. “It’s better not to put more lead into the environment.”

The Coast Guard, he said, already has switched to frangible rounds for its firearms training.

The range has been in use for “a long time,” according to Cochary, but he said he wasn’t sure how long. Acadia hopes to improve the site somehow, either by mitigating or eliminating the lead fired into the hillside, and to make it easier to maintain, he said.

According to Bob Bechtold, an environmental protection specialist with Acadia, the range has been in use since at least the 1960s. He said the park recently received test results that indicate there is lead contamination at the site.

“We don’t want to continue with it any further,” he said.

The National Park Service monitors lead contamination at all of its firing ranges nationwide, according to Bechtold, but there is no requirement that any of them be closed or cleaned up. How soon Acadia’s proposed project might be funded and then completed, he said, is anyone’s guess.

Bar Harbor Police Chief Nate Young said his department’s top choice is to find another shooting site in town outside the park boundary. He said there are other training sites available in Hancock County and in Bangor but that these sites pose travel and scheduling issues he would rather avoid.

Young said he sees no reason why the town shouldn’t continue to use lead bullets to train its officers.

“We’re not going to buy ‘green’ ammo,” Young said. “It’s more expensive but less dependable. It goes through a piece of paper sideways.”

Young said that frangible, or “green,” rounds cost about twice as much as lead bullets but that he does not know what it might cost to build a suitable, safe firing range. The town is considering approaching a private landowner in Hulls Cove about building one there or building one on a 40-acre parcel the town owns in Salisbury Cove, he said.

Wherever a new range might be, the town will be sure to consider the effect it might have on neighbors, he said.

“It’s noisy but necessary,” Young said.

James Willis, police chief in neighboring Mount Desert, said Friday that he has been aware of the park’s eventual plans to ban lead at its range but hasn’t made plans for what his department will do.

If the town determines the frangible rounds are too expensive, it could look to train elsewhere, he said, but suitable places to discharge weapons aren’t easy to find.

“If you have a gravel pit, it’s easier to do than if you don’t,” Willis said. “You’ve got construction costs and have to make sure it’s safe. I’m hoping we can find two or three departments that want to get together and do something.”

Southwest Harbor Police Chief David Chapais, like the other police chiefs on MDI, said his officers get firearms training twice a year. He said he has not reviewed the town’s options for when Acadia enacts the lead-bullet ban.

“That’s a bridge I’ll have to cross when we get to it,” he said.

btrotter@bangordailynews.net

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