Why can’t I go to an area managed by the state and feel safe?

To the editor:

Earlier this spring, a friend and I went out to Mud Lake within the Knik River Public Use Area, near the Butte. The Jim-Mud lakes area, off of Maud Road, is an accessible and incredibly beautiful spot, and attracts a variety of users year-round. I always have to think about whether or not I want to recreate there due to the intense, echoing sounds from the state sanctioned shooting range, and I know some people simply no longer go there. More and more it is hard to go there and not have it sound like a war zone. But it is a public use area, and rather than avoid the area, I would like to help keep the dialogue going about the uses, noise, trash, and other problems. Even if you accept that one stated rationale for the range was to “consolidate” the existing shooting, there still needs to be on-site management and consideration of non-shooting users.

There is a severe lack of balance and effective management in the Knik River Public Use Area. Why is there no consideration of alternating shooting days with quiet days? Why is effort going into expanding the range and so little into enforcement? Why can’t I go to an area managed by the state and feel safe? (On the last visit there, we called 911 from out on the lake as off range shooting was occurring and we could not tell if it was directed at our parked vehicle, or in our direction.) In a time of fiscal austerity, why is there a $500,000 earmark for the further development of a shooting range that has such enormous impacts on local taxpayers — some of whom may appreciate some limits on the incessant noise?

There are responsible shooters that use the range, and as many have pointed out, there is a need for shooting ranges. That doesn’t mean this range location was ever a good idea. Nor does it help mitigate the off-range shooters, the excessive and amplified noise, and the hideous trash. The Alaska Department of Natural Resources needs to hear from a variety of users in this area. Please take the time to contact them and/or your legislators, and help make the Mud and Jim lakes area really more about broad and shared public use, not an accident waiting to happen.

Lynn Fuller

Palmer