Thursday, September 20, 2012

Oregon Land Contaminated by Lead Shot


The Ashland City Council voted on Tuesday night to buy 12 rural acres contaminated with lead from years of Ashland Gun Club shooting.

The city of Ashland will pay $67,500 and trade 3.8 acres of city-owned land off of Emigrant Creek Road in exchange for the contaminated land.

The city will also pay an estimated $10,500 to cover costs that include surveying and Jackson County planning fees.

Environmental testing revealed that lead from shotgun pellets had contaminated the majority of 12 rural acres owned by gun club neighbor James Miller.

Shotgun pellets can travel 750 feet, but Miller's property line is located just 300 feet from the firing line, according to a city staff memo to councilors.

The gun club has switched to steel shot.

Final cleanup costs could run close to $1 million under a worst-case scenario, according to past estimates.
I wish I had a dollar for every time one of the gun-rights fanatics told us the lead from bullets is not problem.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

11 comments:

  1. Is it a problem? Who is going around eating the dirt at the gun range? Can they point to anyone who has suffered negative health effect at this range? That would be an actual problem. All I am getting is that the state deems lead to be a contaminate, therefore this property is contaminated. Just wondering, is the lead in the ground that hasn’t been mined yet also a problem?

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    1. Obviously it is a problem since we're talking about it. How would we even know about it if it weren't a problem?

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    2. Mikeb, you talk about lots of things that aren't really a problem.

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  2. My argument is that hunters dispersed throughout a state will not contaminate the state if they hunt with a lead bullet or lead shot for small game. After all, lead does exist in nature. It's no different than if hunters released a few drops of crude oil wherever they shot at something ... because crude oil is in nature.

    If you concentrate people at a single location and shoot several pounds of lead every day for decades, I can see where that would be a problem.

    The solution is beautifully simple: steel shot. Steel shot is totally fine for target shooting. Bonus: steel is cheaper than lead and it generates less recoil in a shotgun because it weighs less than lead! Problem solved.

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  3. This land has been used since the 60s. What we know is that your real goal is to make ammunition so expensive that practicing becomes out of reach of the average gun owner.

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    1. No, you keep getting my real goal wrong. I've written it. What's weird is that to your way of thinking my real goal is so bad you can't stand it, yet you keep assigning even worse ideas to me pretending I have even worse and hidden agendas.

      Isn't what I actually say bad enough for you Greg. Why do you have to keep reading my mind and proclaiming it's even worse?

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    2. Mikeb, if you were the only gun-control advocate, I might believe what you say about your goals. The problem is that you are part of a group. I've been hearing about desires to ban lead in ammunition for decades. The goal then was to make cartridges so expensive that people wouldn't shoot much. That's what your side wants.

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  4. Lead from gunfire in the environment makes a difference. Consider the California condor, which is dying from lead toxicity due to hunting. I remember when I lived in Arkansas how foreign nations were imposing a ban on Arkansas-grown rice (a major crop in Arkansas)because of lead content -- a result of the duck-hunting going on in the rice patties.

    A blog post on the issue of documented bullet lead poisoning in the environment and the NRA efforts to make it a non-issue: http://newtrajectory.blogspot.com/2012/07/nra-opposes-changing-away-from-lead.html

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    1. I'm not going to go visit your site, since you don't allow commenting over there. You also haven't addressed the point that I raised about the real goal here, namely to make ammunition so expensive that ordinary people can't afford it.

      Do you have a source for your claim about Arkansas rice? Some European nations were contemplating a ban over mixture with genetically modified rice, but I see nothing about lead contamination.

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  5. Mike are you a developer? What do you do for business?

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