A truck drives past a welcome sign to Joint Base Cape Cod, in Sandwich, Mass. for a controversial machine gun range on Joint Base Cape Cod. But officials with the Environmental Protection Agency expressed skepticism that the new proposal would alleviate all their concerns.
The letter, signed by EPA regional administrator David Cash, said agency officials will continue to evaluate the Guard’s revised proposal before sending the draft report with a recommendation about the project’s safety to the EPA’s national administrator, Michael S. Regan. Regan has the power to effectively kill the proposal range by denying federal funding.
In the newly released documents, Guard officials detailed nine measures that they’ve adopted based on EPA recommendations, and eight that they rejected. “The revised proposal would add a 10-year bullet retrieval program,” EPA officials said in the letter. “In earlier discussions with , EPA had suggested retrieval twice per year.”