11/26/06: Coast Guard Guns Silenced

Update 12/19/06: Coast Guard says it won't fire on Great Lakes

Coast Guard Guns Silenced

Swamped By Public Comment, The Coast Guard Says There'll Be No Target Practice On The Great Lakes Until It Has Had A Chance To Consider All The Information Presented.
Wisconsin State Journal :: LOCAL :: D4
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Associated Press
The U.S. Coast Guard said it has to digest reams of public comment before it decides whether to resume target practice with machine guns on the Great Lakes.

In numerous Lake Superior communities, public officials, boaters and environmentalists were upset to learn in August that the Coast Guard for months had been firing machine guns across open water at a rate of 10 bullets per second. Some worried about the safety of boaters, but more raised concerns about lead contamination in the lakes.

Amid the outcry in Great Lakes states, the Coast Guard put a moratorium on the practice and extended a period of public comment. That period ended Nov. 13, but Coast Guard Lt. Ryan Barone said "we'll take as long as it takes to thoroughly review" more than 1,000 comments submitted.

The Coast Guard wants to create 34 areas on the lakes for periodic live fire drills, part of a homeland security initiative.

Seven of those zones would be on Lake Superior, including several spots a few miles off shore from Two Harbors, Minn., and Grand Marais.

The public would be warned via the news media and marine radio prior to the drills. Barone said the Coast Guard would scan the zones with radar to make sure they were empty before firing the guns, which have a maximum range of 2 miles.

For every critic of the plan there's an equally vociferous supporter. "I'm 110 percent in favor of what they want to do," said Dexter Nelson, president of the Duluth Charter Captains Association. "They need to be trained, the environmental effects would be minuscule and they'd be so far away from everybody that there'd be no chance of anybody getting hurt."

The Duluth Chamber of Commerce and the Duluth Seaway Port Authority also supported the training.

But environmentalists argue that it's not smart to allow thousands of pounds of lead to be essentially dumped into the lake. Barone said the final decision will be made by the Rear Adm. John Crowley Jr., commander of the Coast Guard's Cleveland-based Ninth District, which oversees the Great Lakes. The Coast Guard has insisted that an independent scientific study it commissioned predicted "no elevated risks" to humans or wildlife from the lead.