U.S. Army halts plan to cannon test-fires at former missile silo site in Lewis. Applicant files appeal to park agency in response to 5th incomplete application notice.
By Gwendolyn Craig
The U.S. Army issued a stop-work order last year to test-fire its cannons in the Adirondacks. But the national security consulting firm attempting to conduct the project is still appealing its fifth notice of incomplete application from the Adirondack Park Agency.
Michael Hopmeier, president and principal investigator for Unconventional Concepts Inc., said the Army is not his business’s only customer for this kind of work. He believes the APA has pre-determined to disapprove his application, which he first submitted in November 2021, according to his appeal. The agency’s fifth notice came in January.
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The original proposal involved testing cannons made at Benét Laboratories in Watervliet in the area of Hale Hill Lane in the town of Lewis. They would be fired into a pile of sand with privately owned Big Church Mountain used as a backstop. A later proposal said the company would fire howitzers. The project was to look at the internal ballistics of such munitions to help determine ways to make them lighter, more efficient and less expensive.
A spokesman for the Army told the Explorer in August 2022 that the “Watervliet Arsenal footprint does not provide the necessary capacity to host such a ballistic testing facility.” But in February 2023, the Army issued a stop-work order on the project.
“The Army has determined that it currently possesses sufficient test range capacity to meet its artillery testing needs for now and the future,” the spokesperson said on April 10.
Hopmeier said he’s aware of the Army’s stop-work order, which he attributed to “internal issues that the Army needed to work through, which led to them halting their project. However, the Army is not UCI’s only customer for this capability, and that specific project changes nothing regarding UCI’s capabilities or interests. We are a commercial entity that wishes to pursue lawful projects to support our nation’s national security and the freedom its citizens enjoy; we just happen to have private property that is inside the Adirondack Park.”
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The appeal process
It has been more than seven years since the Adirondack Park Agency, which oversees public and private development in the approximately 6-million-acre park, considered an appeal for a notice of incomplete application.
Keith McKeever, communications director for the agency, said the last appeal was in November 2016 over a permit to LS Marina, a boat services operation on Lower Saranac Lake. In that case, the board voted to uphold the notice of incomplete application.
McKeever did not respond to the Explorer’s inquiry about whether the Army’s stop-work order would have any effect on the appeal process. In past communications McKeever said the appeal would likely come before the APA board at its monthly meeting in May.
The project’s scope
Hopmeier owns a former Atlas F nuclear missile silo in Lewis, where he has been doing indoors ballistics tests of smaller munitions.
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His outdoor plans, he said, would generate 7.5 seconds of sound over the five years he proposes to conduct tests. The proposal included an average of 30 shots per year, with a maximum of 10 shots per month. The company would not fire the cannons on weekends, holidays or between the hours of 4 p.m. and 10 a.m., according to the appeal.
The noise level would be less than what is generated at the nearby NYCO Minerals mining operation (purchased by Imerys), Hopmeier said. Those lands are zoned specifically in the park for industrial use.
James Pulsifer, the closest resident to the proposed firing range, owns and leases the land to Hopemeier. Five sets of nearby neighbors, however, have written the APA concerned about the project.
Hopmeier and his attorney Matthew Norfolk filed an appeal of the agency’s notice of incomplete application on Feb. 29.
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Legal Tug-of-War
The APA keeps asking for the same things, Hopmeier said. “It’s the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome,” he said.
Hopmeier has provided studies on sound and data to the APA, but in the latest notice of incomplete application, the agency “made absurd and unreasonable requests that they have no technical rationale” for, he said. For example, Hopmeier pointed to the agency’s latest request asking him to test the military equipment somewhere else first.
In the appeal, Norfolk called that “overly burdensome” and “untimely” with a cost that “is prohibitively high and inappropriate.”
The test site is within a few miles of the Taylor Pond Wild Forest and Jay Mountain Wilderness, constitutionally protected forest preserve lands. At one of the sound test sites in the wild forest area, the project was expected to cause a sound level of 127 decibels, Hopmeier said. About 125 decibels is the level where pain begins, according to Yale Environmental Health and Safety, but is less than a jet engine. The APA noted the sound level was “unacceptable at that location,” Hopmeier said.
Hopmeier found that “alarming,” considering the decibel levels of hunting rifles can exceed that. He suggested that the APA could take another step and prohibit hunting in the Adirondacks.
“Someone suspicious might think they want to delay the application process until UCI abandons or withdraws its application,” Hopmeier said.
Top photo: The missile silo site in Lewis. Photo by Tom French
Adirondack policy, explained
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Throwing around decibel estimates in an attempt to compare howitzers/cannons to hunting rifles is useless unless you also specify location and distance from the source (muzzle). Concussion effects from blasts also need to be considered and mitigated – as bunkers and berms to deflect the blast/concussion may not be sufficient. Even local seismic testing should be considered.
Testing can be done to determine this, but the testing should first be performed in an area away from the Forest Preserve. I am sure much of this testing has been performed in the past, and is likely why munitions testing if usually done on Federal military lands. If testing on Federal lands can show ecological/environmental safety in neighboring Forest Preserve areas – fine. But show us (residents as well as APA) the comprehensive test results before approving cannon testing in Lewis.
The measurement of sound it not as simple as it would seem. A simple measurng device measures a specific range of frequencies of sound, averaged over a short period of time. If you look at the graph of frequency and intensity of each frequency, of that sound over time, it is not a linear function. That sound is made up of various frequencies and and will be heard and felt by humans and animals in the forest in different ways. A mocroburst of sound at a specific frequency may be damaging to sound receptors and the body (often more than just your ears) of people and animals. There have been media reported examples of our diplomats and others, having had intense sound waves damaging to thier bodies, with little audible sound that could be picked up by the commonly used DB sound meter.
A microsecond of sound at a particular frequency may be louder/stronger than the average, as measured by most db meters, and damaging to sound receptors in the brain and body.
The simple sound meter measuring db will not measure that. An example of how a sound seems louder to your ears, but is not louder on a sound meter is the commercials on your TV. The volume that you would meaasure on the sound meter would not register any differently for the program than the commercials. Because the sound on the commercials are often manipulated in frequency and intensity, commercials often seem louder than the show you are watching. When you are measuring a sound that could be damaging to people and animals you need to get a measurement of the frequencies over time and the intensity of those freuencies, not just the averwage frequencies as measured in db by the commonly used sound measuring decice. My advice is get the testing of the sound measured with devices that can record the frequency, strengthand duration, over microseconds and nanoseconds. APA should ask for, and demand this before approval of this project.
This is just plain ridiculous ! The Army pulled out ! Who is supposed to take up the slack ? The Navy? The Air Force ? The Proud Boys ? The Air Force has more mountains and old missile sites in Colorado as do the Maryland mountains. Let them use those. When we talk about new innovative businesses up here I hope this is not what we were thinking.
You can’t bake a cake without breaking a few eggs. From what it sounds like to me, these tests won’t make much more noise than what people listen to on the 4th of July. Maybe the APA should cancel all fireworks displays. Maybe they should ban fighter jet flyovers and dog fights over the park. (Watervliet makes the cannon barrels for the M1A1 Tanks.that I drove.)
Yeah, NO. We get enough occasional racket over our property (Jay Mountain Range) from the Vermont fighter jets doing fly-overs to Mt. Whiteface and back. (Who the heck approved those??) It’s the Adirondack PARK for goodness sakes — it’s supposed to be quiet and relaxing and enjoyable. Go test your loud war equipment somewhere else, please. I for one do not want to hear it. I want to hear the BIRDS, not the BOMBS.
As residents of of Lewis and having followed the proposed project(s) since the beginning ; we are tentatively pleased that this project is facing road blocks. Many residents of Lewis, and individuals from other communities, do not want this cannon/howitzer testing here. There is a place for this type of testing and activity, just not in the Adirondack Park. Already established federal military sites such as Fort Drum and the Ethan Allan range come to mind. The Army has determined that this project is not appropriate for the proposed site in Lewis for now and in the future. As the Army is the preeminent source of information about cannons and howitzers; this speaks volumes. At this juncture the five incomplete applications to the Adirondack Park Agency and the Army’s determination should be enough to close this proposed project down for good. However, it appears that Mr. Hopmeier wants to appeal the process with the APA further. We hope the powers that be at the APA will look at this carefully and the potential long term ramifications of this type of use within the blue lines of the Adirondack Park. We are cautiously optimistic that the APA will make a final decision of “no” to the proposed project.