Finally we have a new marker that work is continuing to remove a police firing range from Moccasin Bend to make way for the full realization of the Moccasin Bend National Archaeological District.
City engineer Bill Payne said this week that Chattanooga is looking for a contractor to begin removing an estimated 6,147 tons of lead-filled soil on the firing range – a 40-year build-up of spent ammunition that has left the range soils containing toxic metal at more than the federal limit and tainted water that sometimes flows to the Tennessee River.
Meanwhile, a city and county firing range committee established in October continues to research funding, location and needs for a new range.
This is excellent news all around.
Moccasin Bend has a heritage far more valuable for Chattanooga as a part of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park than as for a police firing range.
The full development of a 755-acre national park in downtown Chattanooga will not be just another park with another plot of green space and another set of trails. This is a park that has the potential to move Chattanooga tourism and culture forward like nothing else has since the Tennessee Aquarium was conceived and built.
The Bend’s Native American mounds and village sites represent 12,000 years of human habitation – along with a historic Trail of Tears route and a number of very famous and strategic Civil War cannon mounts.
Already, a million people visit Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park each year, spending $55 million and creating almost 800 private sector jobs. Once Moccasin Bend is complete and open, those visitors will have another full day’s touring available – right in the heart of Chattanooga.
The National Park Service slowly but steadily has moved ahead with plans and work for the park, but as long as the firing range remains on the Bend, it’s hard to see how park visitors can get much pleasure from a visit constantly punctuated by the volley of target practices as gunfire and munition explosions reverberate off nearby ridges and the river.
Likewise, shell-shocked Chattanooga condo and business developers – working away on plans for the land across the river along the back of Cameron Hill – are welcoming news of progress to move the range.
Police, too, should be cheered. They need and deserve a better, state-of-the-art firing range, along with a bomb and tactical training area.
Payne said work on the range lead cleanup is expected to begin by the end of the year and be paid for, at least in part, with the $300,000 recently allotted for firing range maintenance by the City Council and County Commission.