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History
Suffolk County has pretty tall tales since the beginning regarding the operations of
this facility and has never delivered on any promise
made to this community. So here is the "Cliffs
Notes" version of the prevarications and sleight of hand
surrounding the Suffolk County Trap & Skeet Range.
The
first tale...
In 1991, as first-time homebuyers, many people looked at
houses in this area. The models for the development
were located directly across the street from the
entrance to the shooting range, so naturally people had
questions about it. The builder claimed that the range
was to be closed in 1995 and reopened elsewhere.
Understanding that a builder would say pretty much
anything to sell a house, almost everyone decided to
look into that claim.
Calls were placed to the Suffolk County Department of
Parks and Recreation and they were asked if there was
any truth to the claim that the range would be
relocated. The
Department of Parks' response was an emphatic "Yes".
They said that
the
then current vendor's lease was due to expire in 1995
and that they would then be relocating the facility to
county property located west of the Suffolk County
Police headquarters building on Yaphank Avenue, (over a
mile and a half away).
Subsequent calls were placed to police headquarters to
ask if they had heard anything about this and their
response was that not only had they heard of it,
but that there was also talk of the county creating a
dual-use range with the police department, (part police
firing range and part public shooting range). Calls were
also Park Police Headquarters located in Southaven Park
park itself and they confirmed that they too had been
apprised of this plan.
Needless to say, 1995 arrived and the range was going
nowhere. Parks Commissioner Michael Franks along with
his Deputy Commissioner Chuck Skinner, called interested
residents to a meeting at the range and explained that
the reason why the range was not going anywhere was
because the new site would be too close to the recently
built Infirmary building and would pose a disturbance to
the residents there. (A rather bitter irony).
He then passed out a seven page document explaining what
a great neighbor the range was going to be. It included
information about lead cleanup and noise mitigation,
among other things and from that moment on until the
range was closed in October of 2001, not a single
solitary thing was done to alleviate either problem.
The next
tale...
After
the range was closed, building continued here in South
Yaphank and by the time the range reopened (after a
nearly five-year closure), an additional 200 homes were
built in the area. Despite the fact that a
controversy had already existed when there were less
than one hundred homes here, officials apparently
believed that reopening the range near a neighborhood
over three times larger now would somehow pose less of a
controversy. (Look up the definition of
"insanity").
But the spin coming from what was now the Levy
administration was all about
what
a financial windfall the "new" range will be. It was
supposed to attract out of town guests and have them
paying for hotel rooms (there are no hotels in Yaphank)
and to sample the local cuisine (If a bar, two deli's
and a pizzeria can be referred to as "cuisine"), and of
course they would purchase gasoline (and just exactly
how that translates into "dollars for Yaphank", is still
a mystery). The range was all
touted as being a boon to Yaphank, although no one
seemed to be able to quite tell anyone just how that was
so. For the record, Suffolk county had allotted $800,000
for noise mitigation, environmental restoration and
general improvements.
This exists in the form of bonds which will
be paid back at about 5% interest over 15 years.
Everyone from the vendor on down cited the huge
financial input to the county coffers the range would
supply, but in the years prior to 2001, the
best it ever managed in any given year was barely
$30,000. The current vendor claims that his first
full-year proceeds to the county were around $43,000
(much of which, we suspect, comes from retail sales,
rather than shooting fees), but
at the current payback rate, the annual cost to the
taxpayers for these bonds is around $66,000, so no
matter where that $43,000 comes from, that
leaves the county as operating this facility at a LOSS
of $20,000 per year.
So,
where's the windfall?
And yet
another
tale...
Next, we have the issue of lead contamination and
reclamation. The county has claimed that it has cleaned
the site. This is simply not true. Sure, they’ve
scraped the open field in the fall zone for the trap
line, but they have not addressed the massive amounts,
(estimated as up to 60% - 70% of the lead and clay
target debris created by this facility), existing in the
sporting clays section of the range. Sporting clays, by
nature, exist in the wooded areas of the range to better
simulate "real life" shooting conditions. The fallout
of lead shot and broken targets, (themselves containing
known carcinogens), are scattered throughout these
wooded areas and are, in some areas, 4 to 6 inches in
depth. In order to properly clean these areas, much of
the vegetation would have to be destroyed in order to
access this debris which has been accumulating there for
decades. This, of course, would be a direct violation
of the New York State Environmental Conservation Law, (NYSECL),
and such clearing is prohibited in a Core Pine Barrens
Area which is where this facility exists.
Additionally, the lead and clays which have been removed
from the site have been deposited in the public landfill
on Horseblock Road despite contamination readings as
high as 113,000 PPM, (landfill regulations only allow up
to 400 PPM), using an old permit for the lower amount,
presumably to avoid having this material treated as
hazardous waste which would require special handling,
hazmat suits and would draw unwanted attention to the
range because that would bring into question official
claims that no such contamination exists.
The truly laughable part is that even if the county
could successfully clean all of the lead and clays, the
idea that they would then reopen the very facility that
put it there in the first place is the silliest thing
we've ever heard.
The Noise
tale...
Next, we have the issue of noise abatement. Parks
Commissioner Foley claims that plans for a wall
surrounding the facility were scrapped due to high
costs. This is yet another lie. The plans were
submitted to the county but would have been deemed "new
construction" under the NYSECL and as such would have
required permission and project oversight from the Pine
Barrens Commission and it would also have designated the
Commission as the "lead agency" for the project. Once
Suffolk realized this, they quietly withdrew their plans
and instead, then parks Commissioner Foley has offered
us "Hay Bales" as his solution to the noise.
Additionally, Brookhaven Town noise ordinances do indeed
apply to this range and again, based on past studies,
the range would be in violation of those ordinances the
moment they opened for business. The two most
often quoted studies of this range are the McClean study
and the Hansen study.
Both studies identify
huge "Long Island Expressway-type walls" virtually
surrounding the entire facility as a means of noise
mitigation. The
dimensions of these walls are formidable: roughly
17-feet in height and extending beyond 1,800 feet in
length and even at this size, both studies suggest that
even this could not completely mitigate the noise
emanating from the facility. But Steve Levy and
all of the range supporters insist that either there is
no appreciable noise or that it is not a problem.
This, of course, is laughable in light of the now over
40 noise citations issued to the range by Brookhaven
Town with decibel levels commonly recorded in the 85 to
95 dB range. Steve Levy had the opportunity in
2005 to place his pet project on the "Hardship
Exemption" list which would have allowed him to sidestep
(legally) many to most of the NYSECL criteria,
particularly those concerning new construction.
New construction is virtually forbidden in the Core
Preservation Area of the Pine Barrens (where the range
exists), and certainly over 30,000 square feet of
concrete walls along with the foundations required to
hold them upright would simply not be allowed to be
built. A Hardship Exemption would have allowed it
though and it's a mystery to this day just why Mr. Levy
chose to pass on that option.
The
result of course is a Catch-22. Levy can promise
all the noise mitigation he wants, but he's not allowed
to build what's necessary so the entire issue becomes
akin to a dog chasing its tail. Meanwhile, the
current vendor has apparently decided that abiding by
the existing Brookhaven noise laws - (laws which were
in place long before any contracts were signed and laws
that both the vendor and Steve Levy were told would not
allow any exemption for the range) - is a waste of
his time and instead he has decided to sue the Town of
Brookhaven apparently for having the audacity to want to
enforce its own laws.
(Bad! Bad, Brookhaven!)
The whopper!
Lastly, Mr. Wroobel's comments on addressing the needs
of the community. In the eighteen or so months that the
negotiations between he and the county had been taking
place, and indeed even after he reopened the range, he
has mentioned "addressing our concerns" on many
occasions. He himself, in speaking at a legislative
meeting, told legislators about how he wanted to be a
"good neighbor" and wanted to "work with the community"
and to have the range become an asset to the community,
and so on and so forth.
Well...we're still waiting to hear from you, Mr.
Wroobel.
In
closing, the tall tales, the backroom dealings, the
prevarications and misinformation, along with the
insults and the general disregard for the community and
the environment on behalf of all who are involved in
trying to railroad this facility into being is shameful.
The supporters of this facility like to mention that
it's been around for over 50 years, 80 years, 40 years,
Moses shot here, and so on. Be that as it may,
it's now 2008 boys and girls, not 50 years ago and times
change. Long Island is no longer one long stretch of
potato farms and Suffolk County is still the same 900
square miles that it's been for over two centuries. This
range may have made great sense back when Long Island
was mostly potato farms, but with what we now
know of the effects of lead on the environment and the
range’s proximity to a growing community, (built in an
area that has been zoned as "residential" since 1901),
it's time has passed. Suffolk County was well aware
that the area surrounding this range was zoned as
residential and they'd have to be complete idiots not to
foresee this inevitable conflict and should have planned
to move this range long ago. But such was not the case
and the controversy we have now is the result.
Living in the past is counterproductive. Planning
for the future is wise, but wisdom doesn't seem to exist
in government these days and because of that, clashes
inevitably occur when they could have been avoided if
only someone cared to address the issues. Maybe
this range can exist somewhere else, but it can't exist
here anymore. Its time has passed and it's time to face
that and move on.
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