The clean-up will be so expensive that the Norwegian Shooting Association has no chance of covering this itself, says general secretary Per Iversen. – In that case, we would go bankrupt, he says. Hunters and competition shooters have come to Løvenskioldbanen in Bærumsmarka to shoot clay pigeons for over 70 years. The exercise is to shoot at saucer-shaped clay pigeons that are thrown into the air. Photo: Anders Fehn / news This is the country’s most used civilian shooting range. Over the years, hundreds of millions of small metal balls (hail) have been fired over a marshy area adjacent to the course. Until 2005, it was shot with lead. The orange color is due to steel balls rusting. The environmental problems are due to the lead bullets that were shot with before. Photo: Dag Aasdalen / news Previous calculations say that there may be close to 800 tonnes of environmentally harmful lead on the marsh. The Norwegian Shooting Association, which owns the range, has been required to draw up a plan for clean-up. The shooters have engaged the environmental consultants Asplan Viak to calculate what it will cost to clean up the pollution. Earlier this year, environmental geologists from Asplan Viak were on the marsh to take samples of soil and water. The task was, among other things, to calculate what it would cost to clean up. Photo: Dag Aasdalen / news The costs can be large. The most expensive clean-up option costs NOK 320 million. The cheapest option will cost NOK 95 million. The consultants recommend option 2, which costs NOK 270 million, or option 3 – NOK 160 million. – Huge numbers – The numbers are huge anyway, says Per Iversen. He says that the most expensive solution is to dig up 30-40,000 lorry loads of contaminated material and drive it to landfill. In the cheaper intermediate alternatives, the least contaminated soil remains. The cheapest solution is to leave the lead, but try to encapsulate it so that the lead does not spread to the surroundings. But this is also expensive. – NOK 100 million is something that the Norwegian Shooting Association cannot cover on its own, says the general secretary. He says the association has a turnover of NOK 30 million a year, has just over 30,000 members and basically does not make a profit. Toxic lead was spread with the streams The first reports of serious lead contamination around Løvenskioldbanen came in 2014. Fireman Knut Søraas already warned in 2014 that the area around Løvenskioldbanen was heavily polluted. 10 years later, it is clear what it will cost to clean up. Photo: Dag Aasdalen / news The lead dissolves in the bog water and has been spread by the streams into a popular outdoor area. When news made a case about this in 2019, many people were not aware that the water was poisonous, and hikers drank from it. Signs were put up to warn people. The Norwegian Shooting Association was also required to build purification ponds as an immediate measure to stop the worst pollution. It has been in the cards that there would be demands for permanent measures. Lead bullets, which were banned from shooting many years ago, are also still lying on the ground. Photo: Dag Aasdalen / news Requests a meeting It is the state administrator in Oslo and Viken who is following up on the lead problems around the shooting range in Bærum. They have demanded that the Norwegian Shooting Association survey the pollution and draw up an action plan for clean-up. Now the Norwegian Archery Association wants a meeting with them to talk about the progress and what opportunities there are to get financial support for the clean-up. The state administrator informs news that they will look into the matter in the new year. They aim to have an answer ready during March. What lead does to your body Lead has many serious effects Lead is a heavy metal that is acutely toxic to aquatic organisms and mammals. Chronic lead poisoning can damage the nervous system, kidneys and blood-forming system in warm-blooded animals. Lead and lead compounds can damage fertility and cause birth defects. Children are particularly vulnerable to exposure, and we suspect that lead can affect children’s intellectual development. We know no lower limit for the levels that can cause such damage, and the amounts children are exposed to via food and other sources exceed tolerable levels that can cause serious effects. Birds can be poisoned by the remains of lead shot, because they ingest lead together with pebbles and gravel when they eat. Predators or scavengers can ingest lead shot if they eat animals shot with lead ammunition. Lead from ammunition can also spread in meat and be transferred to humans when we eat it. Source: Norwegian Environment Agency Most of the lead ended up in nature before the ban in the early 2000s. But as news has also revealed, the Norwegian Shooting Association allowed its competition shooters to use lead shot illegally for many years after the ban. For this they were fined in 2021.
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Must clean up toxic lead contamination at shooting range – news Oslo and Viken – Local news, TV and radio
