Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
STEVE BOUSQUETThe bill would give 400 gun ranges in Florida immunity from lawsuits if lead pollutes groundwater.
TALLAHASSEE - A political battle between the gun lobby and state environmental regulators shifted to the Florida Senate on Tuesday, and the National Rifle Association won with ease.
With bipartisan support, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill giving 400 gun ranges across Florida immunity from lawsuits if lead pollutes groundwater.
The NRA pushed for the bill after the state sued the Skyway Trap and Skeet Club in Pinellas Park, claiming lead gun pellets polluted nearby land.
The bill (SB 1156) seeks to kill pending lawsuits. Similar legislation passed a House committee last month and is ready for a vote by the full House.
Two politically ambitious Democrats on the committee suggested that election-year politics are behind the measure, one of the few bills moving at all in the months before the 2004 session starts.
"The Republicans are paying the NRA back for supporting them," said Sen. Skip Campbell, D-Fort Lauderdale, a possible future Cabinet candidate.
Sen. Rod Smith, a Gainesville-area Democrat viewed as a likely contender for governor in 2006, voted for the measure because he didn't want to be portrayed as antigun.
Smith, a hunter and who chairs a sportsmen's caucus in the Legislature, represents thousands of gun-owning constituents in the rural counties around Gainesville.
Both Democrats said they want polluted gun ranges cleaned up and still hope to amend the bill to allow the state to clean up contaminated ranges if necessary.
"It's going to pass, so we might as well make it palatable," Campbell said.
The committee approved the bill over the objections of the state Department of Environmental Protection, the Southwest Florida Water Management District and the Sierra Club.
The sponsor, Sen. Durell Peaden, R-Crestview, a retired doctor, challenged DEP's contention that lead is a health hazard. There's lead all over Northwest Florida from military target practice, he said. "It's hard for me to consider us having the two highest performing school districts if bird-shot and lead cause brain damage," Peaden said."I think we need to get the facts on the table."
The bill passed 6-1. Sen. Dave Aronberg, D-West Palm Beach, cast the only no vote.
NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer said state regulators "are drunk with power, and they think they can bully anybody they want." She told senators that enforcing environmental laws against gun ranges is "back door gun control."
Swiftmud, which owns land next to Skyway, denies harassing the Skyway range. Swiftmud attorney Bill Bilenky cited a 2-year-old letter from the agency to the range, describing what he called a "surprisingly generous offer." If the range would end target practice and deed about 20 acres of contaminated land to Swiftmud, the water district would pay the entire cleanup costs, the letter said.
A review of the bill by Senate attorneys questions whether the bill would withstand a court challenge. "The constitutionality of this bill rests on whether the Legislature demonstrates that there is an overwhelming public necessity for this immunity and that there is no alternative means to achieving the necessity," the Senate analysis said.