Archive: Opinions

An Open Letter to Members of the Lansing Gun Club:

Two years ago your gun club agreed to a consent order with the EPA to stop shooting lead shot into the Salmon Creek corridor at your club in Ludlowville by March 31, 2018. Based on your written estimate of 100,000 rounds per year, we calculate that you have been dumping around 3.5 tons of lead into our community every single year for decades. Lead is a potent toxin and there is no truly safe level of lead in our water, air, or soil.

Medical scientists have determined that lead not only damages the brains of babies, it kills at least a quarter million Americans annually via heart disease and other organ damage. Every time you fire a gun you are dosed with lead dust and lead vapor as the ammunition leaves your gun. Most of you probably carry that lead dust into your home on your clothes and shoes, while leaving behind tons of lead dust and pellets for your neighbors in Ludlowville to live with. We are also learning that lead sitting at the bottom of the creek or lake may be activated by warming water, nutrient runoff, and algae blooms – posing an additional hazard to drinking water and wildlife.

The Lansing Gun Club has continued to shoot with lead far past the March deadline, and now proposes to create a second hazardous waste site in Ludlowville with a relocation of your trap ranges to the other side of the creek, pointing them at an extremely steep forested slope – from which you are required by the EPA to remove all the lead every five years by denuding the slope and sifting the soil to reclaim the pellets. We all know this will be an erosion nightmare for the creek and violates the stated mission of your club.

For several years now, the gun club's neighbors in Ludlowville and others concerned with the health of the Salmon Creek watershed have advocated that the gun club accept the simple solution offered by the EPA: switch to steel shot.

The club would not have to clean up their existing toxic waste; not have the expense of moving their trap ranges; be able to continue to enjoy the social aspects of their club without the expense and discord of lawsuits from adjacent homeowners whose property values are being destroyed; not face the impossible task of complying with the EPA's required periodic lead removal from a steep erodible slope adjacent to the creek; and the club's membership would not face the condemnation and anger of their Lansing neighbors that they have betrayed by choosing to double down on their toxic legacy.

The goal of the Citizens for a Healthy Salmon Creek Watershed is to find a solution that works for everyone. We would like to see an outcome that does not permanently pit gun club members against the rest of the community. Our research shows that many other trap shooters and hunters have easily made the switch to steel and other nontoxic shot at a very modest price increase – especially compared to the costs you are imposing on the health of people in Ludlowville and downstream, our local wildlife, and taxpayers who will eventually be handed the bill to clean up after your toxic hobby.

We ask all Lansing Gun Club members to immediately pursue the option of keeping their trap ranges where they are and switching to steel shot. If you can't persuade the gun club's leadership to switch course, then we ask that you publicly resign from the club and go to other upland or indoor sites for target practice. We also ask anyone reading this who knows a member of the Lansing Gun Club to bring this request to their attention.

Gay Nicholson,
Citizens for a Healthy Salmon Creek Watershed
Lansing, NY

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