Machine Gun Range

For the first time in nearly 20 years, officials with the Massachusetts Army National Guard are offering public tours of Camp Edwards to provide a closer look at the environment on Joint Base Cape Cod.

The federal government is funding the construction of a nearly $8 million machine gun range on a military base northwest of Boston, adding fuel to local leaders’ insistence that another range is not needed on Joint Base Cape Cod.“We’ve got one range ready to break ground, which nullifies the need for a second one,” said Barnstable County Commissioner Mark Forest.

As plans to build a machine gun range on Joint Base Cape Cod move forward amid ongoing opposition, the federal government has just awarded a construction contract to build a similar range at a military training site in Worcester County.

Commissioners and their lawyers claim the Massachusetts Army National Guard failed to comply with legal and permitting requirements during its decade-long pursuit of the range.

In a March 24, 2021, email from General Christopher Faux to staffers for Congressman Bill Keating, the general said the machine gun range could not sustain the scrutiny of a more intensive environmental review, and if such a review were required, the Guard “will most likely lose the project and its funding.”

The town Select Board called the meeting to allow officials with the Massachusetts Army National Guard and activists with the environmental group 350 Cape Cod to express their opposing points of view on the proposed eight-lane range.

In a letter released Monday, officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said they will evaluate whether the $11.5 million project has the potential to create “significant hazards to public health.”

The tours are filled on a first-come first-serve basis and the tour set for this coming Friday is full, but the Guard will hold them nearly every Friday — except Sept. 3, prior to Labor Day — until Sept. 24. Then officials will evaluate the frequency of the tours depending on demand.

The meeting, tentatively set for Thursday, August 26, at 6 p.m., at Falmouth High School, will be an opportunity for residents to share their thoughts with state lawmakers and the Select Board, before it takes a formal position on the proposed range.

“That project certainly has to go through a series of reviews and there’s going to be a very significant and aggressive outreach program,” he said during a news conference Thursday.