Late last month, a trio of elk hunters took at an early stroll through a future county park.
They didn’t bag an elk. However, they did score a 3.5-inch-diameter rocket, apparently picked up from an area near an old firing range at Camp Bonneville.
Cleanup contractors, working with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, confiscated the projectile. A state game warden said Monday that the state’s investigation is continuing, although trespassing charges appear likely.
The site is officially off-limits to the public.
Mike Gage, president of the Bonneville Conservation Restoration and Renewal Team, said the men must have scaled a fence ringing the entire 3,840-acre property.
“They were apparently out the night before bragging that they had shot an elk,” Gage said. “They were going back out the day after Thanksgiving to track it and get it. Their friends turned them in.”
Although the hunters picked up an inert practice rocket, their discovery highlights the ongoing hazard at the sprawling former Army artillery range and training ground in east Clark County. Contractors have been working since 2006 to remove hazardous material and munitions, but they had yet to clear the old firing range in the southwest corner of the compound where the rocket was found.
“This item would undoubtedly have been found,” Gage wrote in an e-mail to The Columbian.
Camp Bonneville served as an Army training ground and artillery range from 1909 through 1995.
Contractors have unearthed hundreds of dangerous munitions, along with environmental hazards such as lead-tainted soil, in areas the Army had generally characterized as clean. The state Department of Ecology has asked the cleanup contractor to intensify the search for munitions around areas designated for extensive public use in the future, such as camping and picnicking. Those areas will be cleared to a depth of 14 inches.
However, hundreds of acres of steep and heavily forested terrain won’t be cleared at all.
Instead, county officials intend to post signs and hand out pamphlets to visitors warning them not to venture beyond the marked trails. In addition, a permanent fence will surround a 465-acre artillery impact area in the middle of the backcountry.
“If you’re stupid enough to jump into the central impact target area over a fence that says ‘Keep Out,’ then the Darwin awards (which recognize deaths due to recklessness) may ultimately take care of somebody,” Gage said.
