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CRAIG PITTMANIt creates a result opposite of what the NRA sought: Range owners will face more state scrutiny over lead cleanup than they do now, not less.
A year ago, leaders of the National Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sports Foundation signed a pledge to protect the environment from lead pollution at gun ranges.
"Today's signing demonstrates that our commitment to protecting the environment is just as strong as our commitment to our shooting heritage and Second Amendment rights," NRA vice president Wayne LaPierre said in a February 2003 statement issued in Orlando.
Six months later, though, the NRA launched a drive to do away with any environmental regulation of gun ranges in Florida. Marion Hammer, the NRA's lobbyist in Tallahassee, told lawmakers that gun range owners need to be protected from bureaucrats who "are drunk with power, and they think they can bully anybody they want."
The gun range bill (SB 1156) passed the Senate last week and is poised for passage by the House. The legislation says a change is necessary because the high cost of fighting off lawsuits filed by overly aggressive state regulators "threatens to destroy the sport shooting and training range industry."
But in 10 years, no privately owned range has been driven out of business by a lawsuit mandating cleanup, state records show. There has only been one lawsuit, and it concerns a range that's still in business.
By trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist, the bill will create a result opposite from the one the NRA had sought: Range owners will face more state scrutiny than they do now, not less.
Under current law, over the past decade the state Department of Environmental Protection records show the state got involved in cleanups at just seven private ranges. Six complied with little fuss.
In the one case where the DEP did sue, another state agency offered to pay for the million-dollar cleanup at the privately owned Skyway Trap & Skeet Club in Pinellas Park.
"We told them: You give us your property and we'll clean it up," said Bill Bilenky, an attorney for the Southwest Florida Water Management District, known as Swiftmud.
Skyway's board of directors rejected Swiftmud's offer. The reason: The range would have to move from its home next to Sawgrass Lake Park, the publicly owned land the spent lead shot has polluted.
Skyway agreed to move only if the taxpayers also bought a specific property for its new home, paid its moving and legal bills and reimbursed lost income.
In making that counteroffer to the water district in December, Skyway's Tampa attorney, Robert E.V. Kelley, pointed out that the NRA-backed legislation would kill the lawsuit and hand victory to Skyway. Swiftmud said no anyway.
"It's an unreasonable offer," Bilenky said.
No one knows how many businesses will be affected by the change in the law. The legislation says there are about 400 ranges in Florida, an estimate the NRA supplied. But a DEP survey found just 239.
Either way, the DEP's records show it has left nearly all those ranges alone. Over the past decade, state records show DEP has been involved in lead cleanups at 26 ranges.
Nineteen of the 26 were publicly owned, which means taxpayers cleaned up the mess. Some of those were on military installations, such as MacDill Air Force Base, while others were used by police or sheriff's deputies.
For instance, in the mid 1990s Tampa taxpayers spent $2.2-million to dig up 30,000 cubic yards of lead-polluted dirt around what had been the city's police pistol range in Town 'N Country. The old range is now home to Alonso High School.
The Tampa pistol range case is typical, DEP officials say. Generally the DEP was called in only because the gun range was being redeveloped, which required cleaning up the lead.
The House version of the bill disputes whether lead really poses a pollution threat. But a 2002 study by the University of Florida's Center for Solid and Hazardous Waste Management called spent lead ammunition "a potentially significant" pollution source.
The gun industry is so concerned about lead pollution that the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturing Institute published a manual to show ranges how to avoid harming the environment - a manual prepared with the NRA's help.
The manual says the lead in spent bullets and shotgun pellets that accumulate around outdoor ranges can dissolve and spread, polluting the ground, contaminating nearby wetlands and streams, poisoning fish and other wildlife. At indoor ranges, lead dust generated by the firing of guns can be inhaled by customers and employees, leading to health problems.
The most serious lead case DEP has handled involved an indoor range, Clearwater Firearms. In 1992, a county inspector discovered air vents blowing lead dust over a nearby playground. The range closed while its owner spent $250,000 to clean it up. He reopened but sold the site three years later. It became a bagel shop and car stereo store.
In 2002, an anonymous complainant told DEP officials that an indoor Tampa range, Shooting Sports, had stopped cleaning up lead dust and "he knew several employees had elevated blood lead levels."
Although owner Michael Spielvogel once lectured other range owners on the importance of proper lead handling, he refused to let DEP officials enter the range to collect samples. They got a warrant and found lead dust was accumulating illegally.
DEP threatened a $4,500 fine and ordered a cleanup. Shooting Sports complied and the fine was dropped. Spielvogel could not be reached for comment.
"The fact is, they had let things go a little bit," said Fred Flesche, who bought Shooting Sports last year. He figures Spielvogel spent a few thousand dollars cleaning up, but then "we invested quite a bit of money in the ventilation system."
That was important for his employees' safety, he said: "After all, we have people inside there all day."
Flesche's extensive, and expensive, efforts to upgrade his lead protection are a harbinger of the future of Florida's gun ranges.
The initial NRA-backed rewrite of the law called for doing away with all regulation. But Gov. Jeb Bush opposed that so lawmakers proposed a compromise. Under the version that just passed the Senate, the DEP will have to contact all ranges and make sure they are following a state-designed program intended to limit or eliminate the dangers of lead contamination.
Any range that doesn't show a good faith effort to comply by 2006 could be sued, just like Skyway.
The Skyway lawsuit has been grinding through the courts for four years. It has gone to mediation twice but failed both times. After the second mediation ended in September, state officials asked the judge to schedule a trial.
That's also when the NRA began pushing to change state law.
Hammer says the NRA did so not because of the Skyway case, but because she got a tip DEP was about to file 20 more lawsuits against gun ranges. She will not reveal where she got her information. State officials say it's not true.
"We're taking enforcement action against only one range and that's Skyway," said the DEP's Linda Frohock.
Skyway sits where 74th Avenue N ends near Parkside Mall. The nonprofit range, which has about 400 members, has been in business since 1947. No one has ever cleaned up the lead shot that accumulated, Skyway officials told state regulators.
As a result, the lead pollution is so extensive the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering adding Skyway to its Superfund list. Cleanup costs there and in nearby wetlands could top $10-million, state officials say.
Skyway members did not respond to repeated requests for comment or referred questions to their attorney, who declined comment. Corporate records show Skyway's directors hail from all around the Tampa Bay area: Dunedin, Brandon, Largo, Tampa, St. Petersburg. There are four men and one woman. Some are Democrats, some Republicans.
Hundreds of new homes have sprung up around Skyway. Residents of a nearby mobile home park have complained repeatedly about the club. Visitors to Sawgrass Lake Park are sometimes startled to hear the boom of shotguns over the lake.
In 1975, when Swiftmud decided it needed some of Skyway's land for the park, a judge approved the taking but said Skyway's customers could continue shooting over that land.
Swiftmud officials discovered four years ago that lead shot had strayed onto public land that Skyway never owned. Swiftmud sued, accusing the club of trespassing with its pollution, and got a temporary injunction that curtailed Skyway's regular shooting events for more than three years. Meanwhile DEP sued Skyway and Swiftmud to force a cleanup.
The Senate bill requires both state agencies to drop their suits against Skyway within three months, and allows Skyway to demand that taxpayers cover its attorney's fees and court costs. Hammer suggested that this could push the two state agencies to agree to Skyway's settlement so the land could be cleaned up.
Although the latest version of the bill results in more state oversight of gun ranges, not less, Hammer says she still supports it.
"In some ways it says additional regulation," she conceded. The bottom line for all the gun ranges, she said, is "be good environmental stewards and you won't get sued."
- Times researchers Caryn Baird and John Martin contributed to this report.