Officially, there is “no change in status” with respect to the Maidstone Gun Club executing a new lease with East Hampton Town and a reopening of the private Wainscott club, which has been shuttered for almost three years and remains the subject of litigation brought by several residents who assert that errant bullets fired from the club have hit their houses.
In a July 29 stipulation, however, New York State Supreme Court Justice Christopher Modelewski ordered that a temporary restraining order barring use of all the club’s facilities be modified to allow George Walbridge Surveyors to enter the club to survey the premises.
The gun club’s 30-year lease, for which it paid the town $100 per year for 97 acres of parkland adjacent to East Hampton Airport, expired almost two years ago. The club had previously exercised an option to renew the lease for an additional term. But on several occasions over the last 20 years, multiple Merchants Path property owners reported finding bullets lodged in their houses. Several of them sued the club and the town in November 2022, demanding the club be closed, and a judge granted the restraining order barring the use of all the club’s facilities until further notice.
Councilwoman Cate Rogers, the town board’s liaison to the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee, did not attend that group’s meeting on Saturday but relayed the status report by way of its chairman, Hersey Egginton. She repeated that statement when the town board met on Tuesday.
Walter Johnson, the club’s president, told The Star on Tuesday that “everybody’s kicking the can down the road,” referring to the town and attorneys for the plaintiffs and the club. “We think we’re in good shape to open, but we don’t really know.”
According to a memorandum prepared by Roux Environmental Engineering and Geology, lead was detected in all 30 soil samples collected at the gun club in March 2023, and exceeded the “protection of groundwater soil cleanup objective” standard, a term referring to goals designed to prevent lead and other contaminants in soil from leaching into and contaminating groundwater, in 18 of those.
All five soil samples selected to be analyzed for Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure lead exceeded the federal Environmental Protection Agency regulatory level, according to the memorandum. “The TCLP results indicate these contaminated soils would be considered a hazardous waste under the E.P.A. Resource Conservation and Recovery Act,” it concludes.
Club officials conduct lead remediation, said Paul Sanchez, a former board member of the club who remains a member. “The lead migration is not very far,” he said, “and it’s such a low-use range because it’s not public.”
As for bullets allegedly leaving the site, “there is no more rifle range,” he said of the outdoor range, which was eliminated. “That means there’s not a projectile that could be fired that could ever leave our property, let alone make it over to [a plaintiff’s] property.”
Permanent closure of the club, Mr. Sanchez said, would be a great loss, not least for the opportunities it presents for socializing. “It’s a great place,” he said. “It’s not what they think it is.” The club “was a nucleus, a place to connect with all the local people I grew up with.”
But the club remains a matter of grave concern to some Wainscott residents, among them Barry Raebeck of Wainscott, who in April told the town board that “reopening the legally shuttered facility exposes 90 nearby homes, schools, and businesses to bullets, and all of us to continual noise pollution and poisoning of watershed land with carcinogens.” Several other residents have complained about lead contamination, which they say is the inevitable result of activity at a firing range.
At the Wainscott C.A.C. meeting on Saturday, Mr. Raebeck encouraged the committee to send a letter to the town board, a draft of which he distributed to his colleagues.
“As the Maidstone Gun Club has been closed by court order for 32 months, it is clearly not essential for the community or the police,” the draft letter begins. “If a gun club had never existed there, locating it on public watershed (Aquifer Protection Overlay) surrounded by residences, schools, businesses, active roadways, hiking and biking trails, and a busy airport would not happen.”
“However, the board continues negotiating to do just that. The [club] has signed a lease and presented it to the board for approval.”
The draft letter goes on to criticize use of “incredibly valuable public land” for a gun club. “It is common knowledge that shooting skeet produces harmful levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and that other shooting also produces as many as 12 distinct toxins,” it reads. “The plaintiffs in the lawsuit had the site tested and toxic residue has been found in abundance.”
Owing to the “negative optics of this situation, the board’s actions have been long shrouded in secrecy,” the draft letter continues. “The board is sworn to defend the public welfare. We would expect that to be done in this case, as well.”
“The notion of reopening this gun club with the status quo essentially intact is just outrageous,” Mr. Raebeck said on Saturday. “If you wouldn’t introduce something like this if it didn’t exist, why would you reintroduce it now?”
Referring to the letter, “I don’t expect you to adopt it right now,” Mr. Raebeck told the committee. “But I think that another letter outlining our concerns would be timely because the issue has not been resolved, the litigation is ongoing.” The town, he charged, is “quietly moving along, assuming that there’s going to be a settlement when there isn’t any time soon because of litigation.”
Mr. Egginton, the chairman of the citizens committee, asked Mr. Raebeck if the committee could consider the draft letter and discuss it further at its meeting next month.
“Absolutely,” was the reply, “but I think time is of the essence.”
