While the area with the most contaminated soil immediately next to the gun range has been decontaminated, county and state regulators have been slow-footed in other areas, taking months to order additional tests and going out of their way to find other possible sources of lead, when the seemingly most obvious candidate was a former gun range now wrapped by a chain-link fence.Īs was the case in Michigan before a flood of national attention over Flint changed the tide, California regulators have shown little or no appetite to criminally investigate what appears to have been glaring negligence that allowed the lead problem to fester for years. However, a Capital & Main examination of emails, lead reports and interviews with national lead experts shows the city has fallen well short on that pledge to protect residents. For example, homes situated fewer than 80 feet from the contaminated gun range were left untested for six months, leaving a pregnant mom to wonder if, as in Flint, she wasn’t important enough for swifter action.Īnd the problem hasn’t been with just with the city. Sacramento City Councilman Jay Schenirer, who represents the Mangan Park neighborhood, acknowledged that the city “should have done more externally.” Schenirer made a pledge: “Our number one concern is the safety of the neighborhood, for you and all your neighbors, and for people who frequent the park.”Īpril 2016 church meeting with city officials. “Was this just ineptness - government by omission?” “If I have lead in my home I’m going to deal with it,” said one resident who wondered why the city neglected to tell the neighborhood about the lead contamination for so long. See Sidebar: How Sacramento Fumbled a Lead Cleanup Program Less than a year before, lead-contaminated water had created a health crisis in Flint, Michigan. The Centennial United Methodist Church, where the meeting was held, overflowed with angry residents worried that their homes and the rest of the park could also be contaminated. See documents related to this storyĪfter the ensuing uproar, state and county regulators were put in charge of overseeing the city’s cleanup and testing of the surrounding area. The range was closed in December 2014, but the public was not informed of the lead hazard in and, possibly, outside the building. The indoor gun range was situated in the middle of a public recreational facility, James Mangan Park. Last April, residents of Sacramento’s working-class Mangan Park neighborhood were invited by city officials to a meeting to discuss a health scare involving the presence of lead particulate in their community.ĭays before, a front-page Sacramento Bee investigation explored how the shuttered James Mangan Rifle and Pistol Range had operated for years, despite the fact that toxic levels of lead dust coated nearly every surface of the building.
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