The Blue Eco Legal Council has filed suit against the FBI, Coast Guard, Navy, Marines, and Department of Defense for discarding its lead bullets into the waters of the United States without a permit under the Clean Water Act and for creating an imminent and substantial endangerment under RCRA by not recovering 90 years of its accumulated lead discharges. The City of North Chicago, IL potable water intake is inside the range impact area and their 2006 water quality report detected lead.
The issues are laid out in the online version of our complaint and the supporting exhibits are hyperlinked as PDF's. In it, we propose to the Court a Wide Area Preliminary Assessment in which 3,000 core samples are taken, one per acre (according to FBI documents, 2,975 acres of lake are used as a range impact area), to map the horizontal spread and vertical stratification of the lead bullets.
Once mapped, we propose a removal action whereby remotely controlled underwater vacuums and robotic arms pick up lead bullets and unexploded artillery from the lakebed.
The Government must stop externalizing its operational costs onto the environment. Operating a range according to US EPA's Best Management Practices for Lead at Outdoor Shooting Ranges costs more, just like everything else in life where people follow the rules.
PRESS RELEASE:
Environmental Group Disputes FBI Claim That Its Lead Bullets Don't Enter Lake Michigan
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Chicago - January 19, 2008
FBI Spokesman Ross Rice is quoted in the Northwest Daily Herald:
It is virtually impossible for a round of ammunition to wind up in Lake
Michigan.
I've shot there four times a year for the last 20 years, and you
would have to intentionally aim a weapon to put a round in Lake Michigan, [t]here are no targets we shoot at where rounds are intentionally going
into Lake Michigan.
A 12-foot high and 20-foot wide earthen wall was
substantially rebuilt in the past two years to block all bullets from entering
the lake.
Range regulations, however, tell a completely different story. While training, the FBI is required to raise red flags and post guards to watch the two mile Lake Michigan danger zone with authority to shut down training if anyone enters this zone. When the red flags are flown, "it will indicate that firing is in progress and that the waters in the danger zone are subject to impact by rounds missing or ricocheting off the impact berm."
Click here to read the Coast Pilot 6 regulations for the FBI danger zone
The FBI cannot claim, therefore, that its berms are effective at containing lead bullets within the range. The entire reason the range is set up this way with Lake Michigan in the background is to give the range what FBI considers "the necessary impact area."
"I doubt the FBI would be willing to stake its reputation on these berms by turning the range 90 degrees towards the Great Lakes Naval Station" says Steven Pollack, executive director of the group. "I imagine range owners all around the country will rejoice at hearing the Department of Justice claim, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, their range does not pollute."
For further information, please contact:
Steven B. Pollack, Attorney
Executive Director, Blue Eco Legal Council
3390 Commercial Ave. Northbrook, IL 60062
847-436-9566
steve@ecoesq.com
www.ecoesq.com
Blue Eco Legal Council Complaint Against the FBI and Coast Guard
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"Lake Michigan gives the firing range the necessary impact area (see "Danger Zone" Diagram on next page)[above]. This diagram shows an area extending into the lake 4,000 yards, with a width of 3,600 yards. This area contains 2,975 acres in Lake Michigan." Real Estate Appraisal And Related Studies for the FBI of FBI Firearms Training Facility, North Chicago, IL Pg. 11, 12 (April 1986).
