Special Bd. of Aldermen — 04/15/2019 Page 4
several of our range officers had elevated lead levels. So we have had different companies come in and test the
lead throughout the range, we’ve had to go through an extensive cleaning and part of the problem was identified.
There are a couple of reports which you should all have. The air flow in that gun range is not properly designed
for what the officer's environment is now as they train. It is a single system that pushes the air across and down
the range back into the officer's faces as they are going through their training. We do use lead free ammunition,
however, there is still lead fragments in the primers and in the bullets as they are hitting into the back wall.
So we had that evaluated and we had a mechanical report completed by a company called SMRT and they
identified each of the parts that were failing and which needed to be replaced and some of these parts were 20
years past life. Just a couple of pictures to show you the age of the building. Several of these systems are run off
of fan belts and they are constantly breaking; they are constantly falling off. And if you are not doing daily
inspections you are going to miss that they are going off and again they will be running at less efficiency.
The last thing | want to address to you to answer your question Alderman Kelly in 2011 the City of Nashua did an
Energy Use Study relative to efficiency and assessment. You will notice in the green highlighted area that the
Nashua Police Department in 2011 was operating at 15% efficiency. The next highest | believe was 40 to 42% if |
am not mistaken. So back in 2011 we were operating at 15%. We haven’t made any changes so | would imagine
that number has gone significantly down. That is the situation we are at now. We are asking for the entire
system to be replaced based on the reports of the SMRT. Yes sir?
Alderman Lopez
So basically we are wasting tax payer money running a very inefficient system and we are potentially affecting the
health of our officers who are practicing their aim so that’s another good place for them to be and your windows
can be described as being a pain.
Deputy Chief Carignan
Correct.
Alderman Klee
First off, yes | agree with Alderman Lopez that it does need to be replaced. And | am really concerned over the
Officers testing high on lead levels and that being something caused by this building, a very unhealthy building it
sounds like to me. How many officers were there. One is too many so let me start with that.
Deputy Chief Carignan
So we have three range officers, three full-time range officers, one that had cycled out throughout the more recent
process. Each of the four had elevated lead levels. One of the officers was at a point where we almost had to
pull him out of his position and not allow him to be on the range. Now | would also like to say that the issue with
the air flow in there and the lead contamination was not 100% based on the HVAC system, that system was
blowing that air back at them being potentially dangerous for them. But that range is also original to the building,
it had never been deep cleaned. So we had to hire a company which we did within our own budget to come in
and clean all of the, we had to clean all of the filters and we had to repaint, we had to strip down the walls, take
out the floor, re-do the floor, repaint everything pull the ceiling down. So we had to a lot of deep clean in that
range which had never been done. We are hoping that in addition to stripping out a lot of the stuff, we don’t have
room in the building to put a lot of the stuff that we had on the range that we use for training. We've had to
basically we’ve had to find other places for them. We can tuck them in the garage, we put them outside in a
different closet, so by taking all the material out there we take out stuff that can contain and hold on to that lead
material.
We have changed to a lot of stainless steel and non pourable surfaces to not hold the lead; put tape strips down
that you can take the lead off the shoes as they are exiting. So we have made several changes that were
