EPA opposes Cape gun range plan, citing threat to aquifer
Environmentalists opposing a controversial $11.5 million machine gun range planned for Joint Base Cape Cod won a significant victory Thursday when the Environmental Protection Agency issued a warning that the range could contaminate the Cape Cod aquifer and leave residents with no safe drinking water.
The EPA released a draft determination saying the proposed 138-acre range at Camp Edwards could cause “a significant public health hazard for more than 220,000 year-round ... Cape Cod residents” and might force neighboring towns “to construct and operate expensive advanced drinking water systems, overburdening communities that already face economic hardships.”
EPA officials said the determination was the first of its kind in New England and the first in the nation since 2015.
“We have an extraordinary aquifer that supplies all of the water for the Cape for the year-round residents, for the summer visitors, for the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe that, of course, has used the aquifer for generation upon generation,” EPA Regional Administrator David W. Cash said in an interview. “And this aquifer also has a history of contamination and pollution that comes from the base.”
Federal and state agencies have devoted significant resources to cleaning up the aquifer, and that work could be undone by pollution from bullets and the chemicals released when they are fired on a range, Cash said.
“There’s a legacy of collaboration in this cleanup, and we don’t want the activities that were proposed in here to threaten that legacy,” Cash said. “We’ve made huge steps forward in the cleanup of the aquifer, but it’s not finished, and we still have a lot to go.”
The EPA will hold a public meeting May 24 in Sandwich and accept written comments from the public until June 26 at R1SSAComments@epa.gov. After that, EPA officials will present a final re
port to the agency’s head, who will decide whether the project can go forward with federal funding.
The Massachusetts Army National Guard did not respond to requests for comment from the Globe on Thursday but released a statement to the Associated Press.
“The Massachusetts National Guard remains deeply committed to upholding environmental protections while providing our personnel with a range that serves our complex training needs and enhances soldier readiness,” the Guard told the AP.
Two years ago, the National Guard Bureau, a federal agency overseeing state militias, determined that the proposed range would have “no significant impact” on the area’s ecology.
But elected leaders and environmentalists have vocally opposed building the range, pointing to the military’s centurylong history of environmental degradation of the base through detonated munitions, unexploded and decaying ordnance, and various toxic chemicals, which led federal regulators to designate two portions of the base Superfund sites.
State Representative Dylan Fernandes, a Democrat who represents Cape Cod and has opposed the gun range over environmental concerns, lauded the draft report.
“The EPA’s finding is clear: the proposed machine gun range on Cape Cod poses an existential threat to our solesource aquifer and our way of life on this delicate peninsula,” Fernandes said in an e-mail. “The machine gun range must not move forward and this report is a call to action for all Cape Codders to defend our water.”
Members of the state’s congressional delegation who previously called for an in-depth environmental view of the plan thanked the EPA for its work and said they look forward to hearing more from the public over the next two months.
US Senators Edward J. Markey and Elizabeth Warren and US Representative Bill Keating, whose district includes the Cape, released a joint statement urging the National Guard “to continue to work collaboratively with local officials and concerned residents to protect Cape Cod’s sole-source aquifer from contamination.”
Mark Forest, chairman of the Barnstable County Board of Regional Commissioners, said the board “has consistently and staunchly opposed the project for its potential threat to the region’s water supply.” Forest said in a statement that the Upper Cape Water Supply Reserve “is among the most ecologically significant conservation areas in the Northeast.”
“We urge all residents of Cape Cod to demonstrate their support of the EPA’s efforts and participate in the upcoming public hearing,” he said.
Andrew Gottlieb, executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, said leaders at the base had “developed this proposal largely out of the public view” and shown “an unwillingness to engage the community in a constructive conversation.”
“It wasn’t until they were very far along in the process that the scope and magnitude of this project became known to the public,” he said in an interview.
Afterward, the Guard collected nearly 1,000 comments from residents but ignored them, Gottlieb said and submitted a final plan that was essentially identical to the first draft. When Association to Preserve Cape Cod officials sought to review the comments, they had to submit public records requests three times before the base released them all, he said.
“The Guard was just trying to jam this project down the throats of Cape Cod, with very little concern or understanding about what the potential impacts of it were,” Gottlieb said. “Their unwillingness to have any meaningful discussion about . . . changes to the project resulted in EPA’s findings, because they didn’t do anything to mitigate any of anybody’s concerns.”