First shot in gun range plan

By Warren Cornwall

Herald Writer

The hills north of Sultan could echo with the sound of rifle shots if a proposal to build a county gun range there gets the nod.

But turning the newly released proposal into reality would require the support of Snohomish County politicians and $2.7 to $4 million in funding at a time when county budgets are growing tight.

First, the public will get to offer its thoughts on where the range should be built, or if it should be built, at two hearings later this month on a draft environmental study.

The study is the latest step in a longstanding push for a gun range serving both the public and law enforcement. After searching for viable sites for nearly a decade, the county has settled on two contenders.

The favored site in the new study is 227 acres of state land on Sultan Basin Road 5 1/2miles northeast of Sultan. The other is 250 acres of state land on a dirt road four miles southeast of Granite Falls.

Several other sites also have been considered, but were dropped partly because of public concerns about noise or stray bullets, said Marc Krandel, park planning supervisor with the county’s Parks and Recreation Department, which oversaw the study.

The two spots under consideration are far from any homes, he said.

"This would have no impact on residential communities directly," he said.

Sultan Mayor C.H. Rowe welcomed the idea of a gun range near his city. But he was surprised to hear the county had revived a plan he thought had gone dormant.

"The reason why I would support this is people who hunt and like to shoot recreationally — they need a place where they can go do their target practice," said Rowe, a former hunter and president of the Sultan Sportsman’s Club.

Shooters have already converted gravel pits along the Sultan Basin Road into makeshift shooting ranges, and damaged trees and left garbage in the process, Rowe said.

The county sheriff’s office also has been without its own shooting range since 1997, when a stray bullet from the range at Paine Field hit a child care worker at a nearby center. The range was shut down and the incident helped energize the search for another location.

The proposed facility would include special training ranges reserved for law enforcement.

But there is no money earmarked for it. Building at the Sultan site could cost an estimated $2.7 million, while the Granite Falls site pushes projected costs to $4 million, the county study states.

"There’s nothing budgeted for it, so it’s a decision the (county) council would ultimately have to make," Krandel said.

In addition to costs, the Sultan site also was more attractive because it generates less sound from gunshots, he said. Tests nearby suggested it could produce 2 decibels of noise, compared with up to 9 decibels at the Granite Falls site, according to the study.

Lead contamination represents another challenge.

Lead from bullets has contaminated some other gun ranges, including the closed Paine Field range. There, the county is preparing for a cleanup that could cost up to $750,000 to remove lead and contaminated soil.

The county could prevent contamination at the proposed range by regularly sifting the remains of bullets from the soil, Krandel said.

You can call Herald Writer Warren Cornwall at 425-339-3463 or send e-mail to cornwall@heraldnet.com.

The Snohomish County Parks and Recreation Department plans hearings about a proposal to build a gun range north of Sultan or east of Granite Falls.