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You know how restaurants used to have to pay to have waste grease hauled away? But now that same grease is a valuable commodity, which the high bidder pays to get? The critical thing that changed was the price of used grease (for biodiesel and other converted uses).

The same has happened to lead abatement at firing ranges. Instead of being a liability, berms full of lead are now an asset. Companies seeking to mine the lead and copper are actually paying ranges to clean up their berms.

We have two 12-lane, 50-yard outdoor ranges at work. I don't know exactly how long they've been in use, but the facility opened in 1940. Last week two reps from a company called "Clear Range" had an appointment with the facilities manager to take a look. They offered to pay to mine the berms, and to repair them fully when they're done.

I don't know what will happen to the offer, since we're dealing with Governmentium, the slowest element in the periodic table. But for anyone with a private range that has seen moderate to heavy use, this could be worth looking into.

I don't have any contact info on the company, but I could probably get it if anyone cares to shoot me a PM.

Kevin

I was told by someone at Top Gun here in Houston that they have a guy come in and pay them to haul off their brass and lead.

Those type guys have been calling our little place for at least the last year, trying to play let's-make-a-deal for lead and brass. Some of 'em just don't wan't to accept "Our volume is not worth wasting your time or mine" for an answer.

Local recycle biz this week payin' .25 per pound on lead and $1.00 per pound on brass. It kinda helps to offset the increases in ammo pricing.

I was at Quail Creek last weekend, and was talking to the Range Officer. He said that the ranges had recently been mined and they pulled out 65 tons worth of lead, and had to stop because they couldn't hold anymore in their equipment (they had a short time to mine the lead so that the range could go back to being operational)

bdickens wrote:I was told by someone at Top Gun here in Houston that they have a guy come in and pay them to haul off their brass and lead.

TopGun isn't the only range with that kind of agreement. To my knowledge, this has always been a source of income for indoor ranges because the bullet traps make it fairly easy to collect the lead and the brass is swept up every night. With prices going up, I am sure it is a bigger source of income than it used to be.

Outdoor ranges on the other hand, have always sold their brass. But the increased price of lead probably does make mining the berms an economically viable process. It seemed that more recently, EPA issues were making the use of lead at outdoor ranges a thing of the past. May be that tend will stop.

BigBlueDodge wrote:I was at Quail Creek last weekend, and was talking to the Range Officer. He said that the ranges had recently been mined and they pulled out 65 tons worth of lead, and had to stop because they couldn't hold anymore in their equipment (they had a short time to mine the lead so that the range could go back to being operational)

Makes me wonder what would come out of the ranges at Fort Sill or other similar military gunnery ranges that have been in operation for 100+ years. When I used to do target drops over the range in the early 80's, the ground looked like the surface of the moon but it is covered in steel and lead. I suspect the unexploded ordnance would make mining interesting.