No home for the range

Finding a new location for the Chattanooga Bomb Squad to detonate the explosives it collects is not likely to be a blast.

The bomb squad now operates out of the Moccasin Bend firing range on the Tennessee River, using the facility to detonate hundreds of pounds of explosives each year that cannot be destroyed where they are found.

Police say the range provides the best location away from residential areas.

"Out here it's perfect," said Chattanooga police officer and range master Jim Brock. "We've got the river and industry across the river from us. It doesn't bother anybody."

But city and law enforcement officials are searching for a location for a new range, because the current one is next to the 755 acres dedicated as the Moccasin Bend National Archaeological District. The range's 17 acres, owned jointly by the city and Hamilton County, eventually will be added to the district to connect to the existing Tennessee Riverwalk and create walking trails, officials hope.

Finding a new location for the firing range is difficult enough, in part because of issues with residual lead, but finding a new location for bomb squad training and detonation compounds the problem, officials say.

"We don't know what we're going to do there," said Chattanooga Police Department Deputy Chief Mark Rawlston. "Our bomb squad is the bomb squad for the Southeast region (of the nation), and they do a lot of work all over this district. That's something we can't let suffer."

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines make it difficult to create an environmentally safe outdoor firing range because of the distance ammunition can travel if it misses its intended target. There's also the concern of lead going into the land from the ammunition.

At Moccasin Bend, copious amounts of lead sit in the bank behind where officers now fire rounds, Officer Brock said. That lead will need to be removed before the park service allows visitors onto the site.

"They're waiting for us to find a place," Officer Brock said. "They would like for us to be gone tomorrow, but they know we have to find a place and get money to build on it."

EXPLORING OPTIONS

The most attractive option for the firing range is to find land and build a facility similar to the federal fully contained outdoor range in Brunswick, Ga., Chief Rawlston said. That range allows 24 officers to shoot at a time and reduces the chance of ammunition contaminating the earth or traveling long distances if it misses a target, he said.

"The bullets are all trapped and placed into a sterile, sealed environment and are collected on the spot," Chief Rawlston said.

Lt. David Woosley, who oversees the department's bomb squad, said storage of collected explosive devices is not an option, because possessing large quantities of explosives is unsafe.

"What are the pitfalls if we stop recovering those explosives?" he said. "We can't just throw them away. There's really only one proper way to get rid of them, and that's to have them function as they were designed and to have a place to do it. ... Our primary difficulty is we cannot replicate (the firing range) facility anywhere else in Hamilton County."

U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., said he has listened to negotiations between city and county officials about where to move the range. He said last week that it is important to preserve the history of Moccasin Bend because of 12,000 years of human history buried there.

"But even without the Moccasin Bend Archaeological District, the firing range is directly across the river from downtown Chattanooga," Rep. Wamp said. "If you're at the Moccasin Bend Golf Course playing golf, you constantly hear the guns firing."

The Chattanooga Police Department and Hamilton County Sheriff's Office have used the firing range for the last 30 years.

For a new site for the firing range alone, officials considered the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant 18 miles north of Chattanooga on the banks of the Chickamauga Reservoir, but getting dozens of officers through the facility's security would take almost as much time as it would to train, officials said.

And bomb squad training there would not be an option.

Officials also looked at the Tennessee Army National Guard Volunteer Training Facility in Catoosa County, Ga. But driving city-owned vehicles into Georgia for something unrelated to patrol duties could violate policy.

They've considered indoor facilities and also land to create another outdoor facility.

Chief Rawlston said officials have no timeline, but they would like to move as soon as possible without compromising the preparedness of the officers and their ability to train.

"We can't stay there indefinitely while we hunt," he said. "We don't have a drop-dead date, but we do know we need to continue to move and continue to push."

Push for preservation

Meanwhile, proponents of the restoration and preservation of Moccasin Bend push forward with their plans to develop the site, a subunit of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park.

Within 18 months, site plans for a new interpretive center located off Hamm Road should be available to the public, said Shelley Andrews, executive director for Friends of Moccasin Bend. Public input on the project has been gathered, and the group is gearing up for a major fund-raising campaign.

Most of the $7.2 million in federal money that Rep. Wamp has secured for the park has gone for land acquisition and a riverbank stabilization project, according to Times Free Press archives.

When the park opens, Rep. Wamp expects to have obtained $14.2 million in federal funding on top of private-sector funds raised by Friends of Moccasin Bend National Park.

The National Park Service has received $500,000 to start the initial design of the interpretive center, which likely will have an interactive museum, theater lectures, audiovisual presentations and classroom space, according to Chattanooga Times Free Press archives.

While nothing absolute has been determined, should the land now used as the firing range come under federal jurisdiction, Moccasin Bend possibly could feature a walking path around its periphery and eventually connect to the Riverwalk, officials said.

Archaeological resources on the Bend will continue to be protected by the National Park Service. The primary purpose of the park is "to protect and preserve those resources," Ms. Andrews said.

Staff writer Matt Wilson contributed to this story.