Noise study begins at park police gun range
Enterprise file photo — Michael Koff
Months after a lawsuit closed its gun range, the state parks department will be conducting a noise study to look into possibly reopening it.
RENSSELAERVILLE — After closing its gun range this spring, the state parks department will be again be reviewing the possibility of a firing range at its State Park Police training facility in Rensselaerville, including a noise study beginning this week.
Dan Keefe, a spokesman for the parks office, said that the department is conducting a review of the firing range, which he said has not been used since settling a dispute with neighbors over noise levels in March. The department will have a “ draft public scope and draft Environmental Impact Statement,” with public meetings to review the plan, according to a release from the department.
An environmental noise study will be conducted from Dec. 10 to 21 between 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., weather permitting. Guns will be fired at the firing range and noise levels will be measured at “residential receptors in the area,” according to the release. According to Keefe, this is typically done with a handheld noise analyzer at places “likely to have the most noise impact (generally due to proximity),” he wrote in an email.
In 2017, park police had established a firing range at the facility. Neighbors of the facility filed an Article 78 lawsuit against the state Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation in December of 2017 over the noise from the gunfire, with complaints of it disturbing their animals and disrupting their work and home life. Article 78 of the New York Civil Practice Laws and Rules is used by citizens to challenge decisions or actions made by government agencies.
A settlement was filed on March 28 with an agreement to close the range indefinitely and to retract the negative declaration for the state environmental review, indicating there would be little impact, that had been issued the summer before the range opened.
The remote, 30-acre training facility, located in the Rensselaerville State Forest, has been in operation since 2008. The site had had a juvenile detention facility that closed in 2004. Residents pushed for the closing after a kitchen worker there was raped and kidnapped at knifepoint by an inmate.
