A year-long Capital & Main investigation has found substantial evidence to suggest that Sacramento’s lead-contaminated public gun range was, at the very least, incompetently run and, at worst, may have been the victim of embezzlement.
A Capital & Main investigation has found that state health officials were aware of lead poisoning cases at Sacramento’s contaminated Mangan Park Gun Range 13 years before its 2015 closure — yet failed to take crucial steps that almost certainly would have forced the gun range to close much sooner.
Today Capital & Main publishes an investigative series on the failure of Sacramento and two state agencies to safeguard the public from the hazards of lead.
On November 15 Mangan Park residents got more bad news. Homes near the neighborhood’s public gun range were discovered to also have been contaminated by lead, almost certainly from the facility. For Jeff Van Slooten, a retired lead expert, the testing came seven months too late.
Last April, residents of Sacramento’s working-class Mangan Park neighborhood were invited by city officials to a meeting to discuss a health scare involving the presence of lead particulate in their community.