The 30-acre Lordship Point Gun Club site overlooks the mouth of the Housatonic River on the Connecticut bank. Trap and skeet shooting on the site deposited 3 million pounds of lead shot between the 1920s and 1980s, contaminating intertidal mudflat and saltmarsh and upland grassland. The Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Sporting Goods Properties, Inc. (DuPont Chemical) have conducted a cooperative natural resource damage assessment to determine how to offset injuries caused by the lead. The resulting settlement agreement, reached in January, provides for the donation of a conservation easement on the site to the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, restoration of 8.2 acres of native coastal grasslands, and a cash payment of $250,000 to reimburse the United States for past assessment costs and to support future wildlife habitat restoration projects in the area.

As a result of the settlement, a conservation easement valued at approximately $6 million has been donated to the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, thereby protecting the site as wildlife habitat in perpetuity. Approximately 8 acres of native grassland has been created on the site in the upland areas formerly contaminated with lead. In addition, $215,000 has been made available for coastal restoration projects.

NORTHEAST REGION, U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE -- Conserving the Nature of the Northeast