Lead at shooting range firing up concerns

Rampart Range Road ascends above Garden of the Gods into Pike National Forest, eventually reaching a stretch of mountain that appears to be strewn with confetti.

A shredded teddy bear lies on the ground.

But this is no place for kids.

It’s Rampart Range Road Shooting Range — the only public shooting range in El Paso County — littered with colorful shotgun shells, spent metal cartridges, and makeshift targets, such as the teddy bear.

The site has long been criticized as an eyesore and a safety hazard. In recent months, however, the Forest Service, which runs Rampart Range, has turned its attention to a new concern: lead.

Improperly maintained shooting ranges — where lead shot and bullets accumulate unchecked — have been known to contaminate water sources and poison wildlife, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Such pollution, however, is most commonly associated with sites close to open water or wetlands.

Rampart Range, opened in 1990, is not in such a position — but does lie above Williams

Canyon, which feeds the aquifer responsible for the springs in Manitou Springs.

In June, Dave Wolverton, president of the town’s Mineral Springs Foundation, wrote a letter of concern to District Ranger Brent Botts, suggesting that lead from the shooting range could be leaching into the groundwater.

In response, Botts organized a team of scientists who began evaluating the site Friday, sampling water for testing from Williams Creek at the base of the canyon.

Botts, who oversees the southern third of Pike National Forest, said he had been struggling with problems at the shooting range for years. He had hoped to find a private management company to run the site, but liability fees scared off potential investors.

This spring, at Botts’ request, the National Rifle Association reviewed the shooting range and produced a scathing report, citing poor maintenance, an absence of supervision and overuse.

“We don’t have the money to do more than what we’re doing,” said Botts, explaining that $10,000 — one-fifth of his recreation budget, after salary expenses — is devoted to picking up refuse at Rampart Range four times a year.

Although the NRA evaluated the site shortly after one of these cleanups, it still deemed trash “a significant problem” and mentioned the issue of lead migration.

Rampart Range sits high above a complex, underground water system scientists have only recently come to understand.

Two decades ago, Manitou’s springs were commonly thought to derive from separate sources because of their different mineral compositions. But in the late 1980s, Fred Luiszer, a geologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, descended deep into Cave of the Winds and discovered a single giant aquifer — where water that’s spent hundreds of thousands of years passing through Pikes Peak meets younger water from Williams Canyon.

It’s this mixing pool — the chemistry of new water meeting old — that results in the effervescent springs and their distinct flavors.

Luiszer said he had spent much time working below Rampart Range, hearing gunshots overhead. “You could probably open a lead mine up there,” he said.

Yet he isn’t worried about the shooting range contaminating the aquifer.

“The soil where the bullets actually land will get contaminated with lead, but it doesn’t move very far,” he said, explaining that lead readily fixes itself to iron minerals, clays, and organic materials like decomposing leaves.

Luiszer, whose laboratory at CU-Boulder analyzes samples from shooting ranges, said he rarely finds lead below the top 6 inches of soil.

“The biggest danger of a firing range like that is that sooner or later, as you get more hikers and bikers using that area, and people start to build nearby it, they will finally shut it down,” he said. “It becomes a campground or something, and then you end up having contaminated soil and children playing in it.”

For his part, Botts said the solution may not involve closing the shooting range — but rather opening other ranges to better serve the area’s high number of gun enthusiasts.

“I think that we need more shooting opportunities for the Front Range folks,” he said. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be on public land.”

On a recent morning, Wolverton drove up to Rampart Range where he encountered a halfdozen shooters — one of whom paused to attest to the virtues of lead ammunition versus pricier alternatives.

Before Wolverton turned to go, he surveyed the shot-up signs, the stumps of dead pine trees, and the fields full of broken glass, spent cartridges and shattered electronics.

“If this place started in the 1950s or 1960s, before we were culturally attuned to these issues, that would be one thing,” he said. “In 1990, when we already knew so much — it was extremely short-sighted.”