Photo By Michael Maddox | Chet Morgan, a contractor from Taggart Hill Saw Mill in Nashville, Ind., works on...... read more read more
CAMP ATTERBURY JOINT MANEUVER TRAINING CENTER, Ind. — When visiting a range on Camp Atterbury, it’s not a huge surprise to hear some form of gunfire or possibly smell gun powder if you are close enough, depending on if the range is in use at the time. Currently though, Range 47 is “buzzing” with different sounds and smells, chainsaws cutting through timber and the smell of fresh earth and sawdust – all a part of the current clearing project in conjunction with the building of a new range complex.
The work is the beginning stage of what will eventually become the Multipurpose Machine Gun range. Camp Atterbury currently has one MPMG range, but a second one is being built to enhance the post’s capabilities to train Soldiers and civilians.
The tree clearing began mid-January, and will encompass more than 3,800 trees, or nearly 1,200 tons of wood before being finished in April 2011. Even though this is the beginning phase of an overall range project, there has already been a lot of studying and planning to get the job done, said Mike Peterkin, natural resources coordinator for the Directorate of Public Works Environmental Branch here.
The first step in the process was making sure the environmental impact was minimal, said Peterkin. This included leaving a home for an endangered species that calls Atterbury home – the Indiana bat.
“In a project of this size, we have to follow the National Environmental Protection Act. We’re also an endangered species habitat,” he explained. “One of the endangered species we have here is the Indiana bat. We’re leaving about 10 to 15 acres on Range 47 for the Indiana bat in areas that won’t interfere with the range itself.
“It’s part of our efforts to mitigate for an endangered species, the Indiana bat, that we know they are present in this general vicinity, so while we were working with the fish and wildlife department, we tried to leave as much standing timber as we could that wouldn’t interfere with the range,” he added.
The next step in the clearing process involved having contractors bid for the work of removing the trees. But rather than paying the lowest bidder to do the work, the contractors had to bid what they would pay to remove the trees and have the rights to sell the timber.
“Timber assets are viewed as real property so it has a monetary value. We’re not paying the contractor anything, they are paying us for the timber,” Peterkin said. He added, the contract went to a local sawmill in Brown county, so the wood could actually go back into the local community.
“It’s going to local sawmills by and large, depending on the species, quality, and size of it. Mill buys it from the contractor who’s bought it from us, then they’ll turn around and turn it into whatever they can use it for,” he said.
“Forestry is managed a little bit differently than you might think, it’s Army-wide. There’s a reimbursable account and all of the installations who have an active forestry program and are selling timber,” he said. “The proceeds from those sales go into the forestry account. Then on an annual basis, I put together an annual work plan and budget of what I think I’m going to need for the year and what we are going to make (monetarily).”
Peterkin said any money brought in above and beyond the projected budget during a year then goes into a “wish list” fund that the National Forestry Service can use to for additional local forestry projects. He said the fund is dispersed sixty percent to local offices, and forty percent goes back to the communities.
“We straddle three different counties, and divvy up that forty percent to the three counties by the percentage of land mass in Camp Atterbury,” Peterkin said. “Those funds are earmarked for education and roads.”
Now all that’s left to do is finish the removal of the trees, and even that takes some planning, Peterkin said.
“It’s a tricky spot because we’re downrange from the main range complex, so when they are at the ranges north of the work they’re firing in this direction and it has an impact on us,” he said. “Our contractors are coordinating with range control on a daily basis to make sure it’s safe. It’s pretty complex timber sale in that regard.”
The timber clearing is just one step in a several-year process of getting the MPMG range completed – allowing Camp Atterbury to provide units with even more training opportunities, said Larry Erck, live-fire safety coordinator for the Directorate of Plans, Training and Mobilization.
“The Army identifies shortfalls in our capabilities for training troops that are scheduled to come here. To qualify all of them over period of available days for firing and the number of points on a range, they look at what we’ve got and what we need, and we’ve always had a shortfall for MPMG firing,” Erck said. “We currently only have a five-lane MPMG range. That’s not sufficient to do the load we have now because there are a lot more M249 SAWs being used in the military today than in the past.”
The land is scheduled to be cleared by mid-April 2011, and then construction will begin on the MPMG Range. That construction is scheduled to be complete by June 2012.
| Date Taken: | 03.08.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 03.14.2011 17:30 |
| Story ID: | 67050 |
| Location: | CAMP ATTERBURY JOINT MANEUVER TRAINING CENTER, INDIANA, US |
| Web Views: | 84 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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