WALLINGFORD - - For more than 45 years, with the blessing of the town, rifle fire from the Blue Trail Range has been zipping across the Ulbrich Reservoir and smacking into a slope on the east side of the pond.
The arrangement is the centerpiece of a 1961 agreement in which the Lyman family, owners of the range, deeded the land for the reservoir to the town and retained the right to shoot onto it. The deal attracted very little attention from regulators or area residents - until now.
Enraged by a separate issue - bullets striking houses and properties about 1 mile east of the range in Durham - Pasquale "Pat" DiNatale, a Durham homeowner, has peppered state environmental and health officials with e-mails about lead deposits from the bullets, contending that they pose a health hazard.
Water tests in the spring showed traces of lead in a stream that flows by the range and in one spot in the Ulbrich, at the shoreline below the lead deposits. As a result, the state Department of Public Health "strongly" recommended to the town's water division that it hire a consultant to "conduct an extensive environmental evaluation of the Ulbrich Reservoir and its watershed ... to fully characterize any actual or potential lead pollution threat." The agency also requested more frequent testing.The state Department of Environmental Protection has also expressed concerns.
No lead has been found in the main body of the Ulbrich or anywhere else in the reservoir system, and the water is safe to drink, local and state officials said. But the situation has raised questions about how serious the future environmental threat could be, and who ultimately would be responsible for cleaning it up and paying the bill.
Town and state officials appear to have been caught off-guard by the lead contamination issue, which arose amid a recent crop of complaints that bullets from the Blue Trail Range were hitting land in TriMountain State Park across the reservoir...
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