“It’s in the lawyers’ hands at this point,” East Hampton Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby told the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee on Saturday when its discussion turned to the Maidstone Gun Club.
Seven residents of the hamlet filed a lawsuit against the gun club and the town in November, seeking its permanent closure. In December, a New York State Supreme Court judge ordered the club temporarily shuttered pending an investigation.
The plaintiffs have either found bullets on their property or discovered that their houses had been struck by bullets. They allege negligence on the part of the town in supervising the club’s operations, John Jilnicki, the town attorney, told The Star.
The gun club’s lease of 97 acres of town-owned land, for which it pays $100 per year, expires on Oct. 31. Last year its officials filed a notice of intent to renew the lease with the town clerk.
Ms. Overby is the town board’s liaison to the committee. On Saturday, she said that one meeting with the club’s representatives had taken place. They “understand that there will be changes to that lease,” she said. “They know it will probably have to be at market rate, that it will have to include some environmental issues.”
In August, when a bullet struck a Merchants Path house, committee members began voicing additional concerns about environmental damage, noise pollution, and the club’s lease terms. Meeting via video conference on Saturday, committee members were frank in expressing outrage that the club has existed for decades despite the evident hazard to human life and their other concerns.
Anthony Liberatore criticized the town for what he said was a hands-off approach that only worsened when it joined with the defendants in trying to block an environmental review of the property. “The town should have done an environmental review of this property the day after the gun club sent their letter saying that they want to renew the lease,” he said. “As environmental stewards, to join the defendants in this way is shameful, I believe.”
Mr. Jilnicki said that the town objected to environmental testing “due to a lack of any protocol for the testing, a lack of any claim in the complaint that the gun club was causing contamination to plaintiffs’ property, and a lack of any scientific basis that any alleged contamination could possibly impact plaintiffs’ properties.”
Committee members’ concerns relate to lead contamination of the sole-source aquifer, rather than to their individual properties. Barry Raebeck criticized what he called “the hypocrisy of calling yourselves this great green community . . . and then doing everything possible to block this assessment, and having done no environmental regulation or supervision, which is in clear violation of the lease, because the lease maintains that there cannot be any environmental degradation.”
“If this isn’t corruption,” he said, “I’m not sure what is. If it isn’t irresponsible, I’m not sure what is. If it isn’t negligent, I don’t know what is.” The club’s officials, he said, “are still claiming that the bullets didn’t even come from the gun club! This is who you are negotiating with. This is who you are contemplating giving a lease to.” There should not be an outdoor shooting range in proximity to hikers, bikers, and other residents, he said. “It’s just insane.”
He predicted more litigation should the club’s lease be renewed. “That would be a logical response to being continually endangered, either through the lead poisoning, and then of course the bullets, and the noise, because they are in violation of that, too,” he said.
Carolyn Logan Gluck, the committee’s chairwoman, summarized the mood to Ms. Overby. “The sentiment, I think, would range from discouragement to outrage right now,” she said.
The Star reported last week that the club has enlisted Martha Dean, a one-time Republican candidate for governor in Connecticut, in its defense. Committee members drew attention to a 2014 editorial in The New Haven Register that said that in 2013 Ms. Dean had posted to her Facebook page a link to a video claiming that the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., was a hoax. “Dean has been an outspoken gun rights supporter,” The Register wrote.
In a statement on Friday, Joseph S. Maniscalco, the gun club’s attorney, told The Star that “At this time the parties are investigating the plaintiffs’ claims. The club would like to assure the community that it is working diligently and responsibly to reopen the club as soon as possible, as it is essential to have safe places where firearms owners can practice.”
