11/24/2021
S.F. gun club closure triggers $22 million cleanup
John Wildermuth
Feb. 23, 2015Updated: Feb. 23, 2015 9:24 p.m.
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1 of 6 Steven Ritchie (left) and Obiajulu Nzewi of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission survey a trap range covered with broken clay pigeon targets during the Pacific Rod and Gun Club’s final weeks. Paul Chinn / The Chronicle
The Pacific Rod and Gun Club at Lake Merced may be shutting down in April, but its presence will linger on in the estimated $22 million bill to clean up 80 years’ worth of shotgun pellets and busted clay pigeons that litter the lakeside s***t- and trap-shooting range.
Earlier this month, the Board of Supervisors approved the final $9.5 million for the cleanup project, which is to begin days after the club moves out April 8. Construction crews will begin removing about 46,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil from the 11-acre site at San Francisco’s southwestern edge, replacing it with clean dirt.
Considering that a single truck can carry only about 12 cubic yards of dirt, there will be a conveyor belt of vehicles moving along John Muir Drive for the year it’s expected to take to complete the work.
“It’s a huge job,” said Obiajulu Nzewi, project manager for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which controls the lake and the land around it. Money for the cleanup will come from the agency’s ratepayers.
The project has been in the works since 1994, when the initial cleanup order was issued, said Steven Ritchie, the commission’s assistant general manager for water. A 2011 study done on the site found that the decades of shooting have left the top 3 feet of the range’s soil contaminated by lead shot, along with levels of arsenic and benzo(a)pyrene beyond the limit safe for humans.
Digging out and replacing the top 4 feet of soil will mean that the entire site is safe for any future use, Ritchie added.
“We want it cleaned to a level where there is no prohibited use,” he said. “Once the cleanup is under way, we’ll look at the public process for deciding on new recreational uses.”
The cleanup could have been far worse. The club banned the use of lead shot in 1994, forcing the shotgunners to use either steel or bismuth shot, inert metals that don’t cause long-term health problems. In 2000, the club switched to biodegradable clay targets that didn’t use petroleum-based binders, which also contaminated the range.
“We’re already one of the greenest s***t and trap ranges in the country,” said Michael Emery, a spokesman for the club. “In the future, if there is a future, we’ll be a sustainable green facility that will be a benchmark for ranges across the country.”
On a recent day at the club — where members shoot on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays — piles of fluorescent orange-and-white shards of shattered clay were the most obvious part of the planned cleanup. The targets crunched underfoot as Nzewi and Ritchie pointed out where the excavation work will be done. In the background, two single-scull racing shells sped across the lake, just beyond the brightly colored buoy that marks the end of the gun club’s range.
With the 400 club members and their guests shooting what a manager estimated at 10,000 clays a week, the pile of debris has kept growing.
Targets biodegrade
While visitors can still find the jagged, black, gravel-like remains of the targets used before 2000, the bright new orange clays turn an oyster-shell white in the sun, and 95 percent of them safely break down within a year, Emery said.
“That’s if we have any rain,” he added.
It’s not just the ranges that will be tidied up. The club’s sprawling asphalt parking lot, where the crew teams from St. Ignatius College Prep and the Pacific Rowing Club now park the transports for their racing shells, will also be torn up and excavated, as will the area around the club’s aging wooden buildings.
“You can’t operate for 80 years and not get things spread around a bit,” Ritchie said.
The water agency caught a break when studies found the mountain of lead shot that has fallen into Lake Merced since the club opened there poses no health problem.
With the lead pellets buried in the lake’s sediment, “the only real concern are diving ducks, which can pick up the shot when they go down and feed,” Nzewi said. “But we don’t have any of those ducks at the lake now.”
The cleanup crews will be staying well clear of the lake to avoid any problems with erosion and contamination, he added. Digging will stop about 10 feet above the water line.
Future unclear
It’s been an acrimonious breakup between the water agency and the club, which first leased the land in 1934, when the opening of the Hetch Hetchy water system meant Lake Merced was no longer needed as a city reservoir. The PUC handed the lease over to the city’s Recreation and Park Department in 1950, but took it back in 2012, “when it was decided (the club’s lease) was more a matter of land management,” Ritchie said.
That same year, the PUC filed a legal action against the club, giving it two years to vacate the land. It also has filed a legal action that would force the club — or its insurance company — to pay for some or all of the cleanup. That case is still ongoing, Ritchie said.
While Ritchie insists no decision has been made on what will happen when the cleanup is complete, no one’s betting that the club will be back.
“Shooting is a possible use, but the possibility of the shooting range covering the entire site is unlikely,” Ritchie said.
The last shooting days for the club, which was founded in 1928 on the Napa River, will be April 4 and 5, with everything cleared out by April 8.
Historic relics
Parts of the club will linger. The major buildings, the green wooden fences separating the various s***t and trap ranges, and even the aging and weather-beaten low- and high-rise “houses” where the clays are launched for the shooters could be considered historic structures under city rules and so must be preserved, at least for now.
“We brought in contractors, and they were incredulous about what had to be done and what had to be saved,” Nzewi said.
But buildings aren’t people, and the club’s impending closure, with the bulldozing of much of its grounds, will take plenty of memories with it.
On a recent morning, David Lee, who runs the club’s rifle program, was packing away some of the dozens of trophies lining the walls of a room off the 50-foot indoor range for small-bore and air rifles.
“The Olympic Club, PG&E, Golden Gate, Palo Alto, 4-H, the San Francisco Rifle and the Shriners are all clubs that use the range,” said Lee, who also coaches the University of San Francisco rifle club.
When asked what the groups will do when the Pacific Rod and Gun Club finally shuts down, Lee could only shrug.
John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: [email protected] Twitter:
