To probably no one’s surprise, a private survey of creek sediment next to Greenbury Point found signs of lead contamination. Its most likely source is the rifle range at Naval Support Activity Annapolis, the working Navy side of the Naval Academy that sits across the river.
CSI Environmental collected sediment samples this past spring along Carr Creek, a small waterway dividing the Navy station and the overgrown peninsula where the Severn River flows into the Chesapeake Bay. Lead was significantly above accepted health limits, and sufficient exposure can cause neurological disease and birth defects.
On Monday, area resident Jim Burdick asked the Maryland Department of the Environment to investigate and determine the source and extent of the contamination.
“The Rifle Range has been in use for approximately 100 years and during this time, millions of rounds of lead-based munitions have been fired into the adjacent land and waterways of Carr Creek,” he wrote MDE in an email.
It’s the latest move by Annapolis area environmentalists, who clearly did not take their victory over the Naval Academy Athletic Association’s golf course proposal last year as mission accomplished. Congress inserted language into the annual defense spending bill in December that gave it final approval of major changes to the 240-acre conservation area.
“In the last year, we have retained counsel from the internationally recognized law firm WilmerHale in Washington as we continue to seek permanent protection for Greenbury Point Conservation Area, preferably through a Navy National Monument recognizing the sacrifice of service and the incredible naval history that took place there, including its vital role in the victory of American democracy during three wars — World War I, World War II and the Cold War,” Chesapeake Conservancy CEO Joel Dunn said in a statement.
Greenbury Point is a reminder that the Navy — whether you served in uniform, love Navy football or sponsor midshipmen at your home — can be a tough neighbor.
Fifteen miles away, in Gambrills, the Navy has upset area residents with plans to build a solar farm at the Naval Academy Dairy Farm. The 857-acre farm once provided safe milk during a typhoid outbreak but is leased today to Anne Arundel County for green space in a growing area. The Navy wants to use it to reach its net zero greenhouse emissions goals.
In Annapolis, the Navy is working on a decades-long plan to protect the academy from climate-driven flooding. It also is working closely with Annapolis on its own $100 million plan to create a flood-absorbing barrier at City Dock.
Last year, Navy officials came to Annapolis to listen to Burdick and other environmentalists talk about the range, but didn’t make any promises.
The Navy usually listens to its neighbors, whether it’s the rifle range or the dairy farm. It just may put its needs first.
“Yes and no,” Burdick said. “If your concern is environmental, remember, those guys are spending billions and billions of dollars to manage rising sea levels.”
Chesapeake Conservancy, an Annapolis nonprofit that works to make more land available to the public on the bay, isn’t taking any chances. Using private donations, it set up the nonprofit Friends of Greenbury Point to work toward creating a national monument, a protected area created from federal land by the president or Congress.
The two commissioned a Greenbury Point Cultural Resources Inventory study to document the site’s naval history, pre-contact Native American history and Colonial period homestead sites — all factors in winning national monument status.
And they paid for the lead study.
Jay Apperson, an MDE spokesperson, said the Navy launched an investigation of potential underwater contamination last month. Lead contamination around rifle ranges is a well-known problem.
Twenty miles from Annapolis, parts of Fort Meade are listed by the Environmental Protection Agency as a Superfund cleanup site because of military training — including lead in the soil and water. Across the bay in Queen Anne’s County, the owners of the Pintail Point sport shooting site agreed to clean up contamination in the soil and water.
The U.S. military has shifted away from lead ammunition, moving to tungsten small arms rounds. It’s not clear if the Navy still allows firing lead ammunition at its rifle range on Greenbury Point.
A spokesperson for the Navy station said that it had received the CSI test results.
“The Navy has codified programs to evaluate, investigate and, if necessary, remediate ranges. NSA Annapolis will adhere to those programs when applicable,” she wrote in an email.
Although the study was a personal project for Burdick, he has led other efforts to shut down the rifle range. Greenbury Point is closed to the public when it is in use to reduce the risk of a stray round injuring someone on a trail across Carr Creek.
As chair of the Severn River Commission, he submitted a March 2023 paper to the Army Corps of Engineers opposing a Navy plan to create new rifle range “danger zones.” They would shut down the conservation area and boat traffic on Carr Creek and Whitehall Bay three to four times a week.
Burdick argued that the range does not meet Navy safety standards or comply with state law, and called for the EPA to take over cleanup efforts.
“The NSAA non-conforming Rifle Range should be closed,” he wrote.
The Navy, for its part, is moving ahead with an upgrade. A contract to install baffles, barriers that would keep rounds fired at the range from traveling beyond its boundaries, was awarded this month, with completion set for spring 2026.
Mids use the range for small arms training and qualification during plebe summer and the academic year, the Navy spokesperson said, and the academy rifle and pistol teams practice there. Navy police officers, sailors and Marines in the academy’s security unit and various local and federal law enforcement agencies also use it.
Bradley Gordon, a government affairs official at the academy, wrote in an email Friday that Combat Weapons teams shoot on the range, while varsity rifle and pistol teams use the indoor range at Bancroft Hall.
J. Dustin Ferris, who managed the CSI survey, said the range is the most likely source of the lead. Depending on the results of a wider study, the contamination could be scooped out or contained.
“The solution,” he said, “is to remove the sediment with hydraulic dredging if it’s extensive enough to warrant that.”
