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Sheriff's Office narrows sheriff's range to Bentonville transfer station; board hears environmental, noise and address impacts
Summary
Officer Roy updated supervisors on conditional-use permitting and said five candidate sites for a new sheriff training range were evaluated primarily on safety and size. The Bentonville transfer station scored best; staff noted monitoring wells there to check potential lead contamination, quantified affected addresses for other sites, and said the CUP will return to the planning commission in October.
Officer Roy of the Warren County Sheriff's Office briefed the Board of Supervisors on the status of site selection and conditional-use permitting for a proposed county firearms training and public-safety training range.
Roy said the sheriff's office submitted a conditional-use-permit application and has received comments from DEQ, Public Works and the health department; staff expect the planning commission to consider the CUP in October (possible October 9 meeting). The county narrowed many suggested parcels to five candidate sites based on two mandatory criteria: safety (including ability to control ballistic containment and privacy) and range size sufficient to provide training beyond basic qualification.
The five sites discussed included the Bentonville transfer station (which staff flagged as meeting both safety and size and having on-site groundwater monitoring wells), Catlett Mountain (a bowl-shaped site with good natural containment but limited access across a couple of private residences), an old landfill site (low cost but with 852 addresses within a one‑mile radius), ESA Lane (wetland constraints, 663 addresses impacted), the RSW/Regional Jail-adjacent parcel (qualification-size only and costly to make safe), and Rockland Park Road (wooded, high pedestrian use, adjacent river and park). Roy said Bentonville is the best current option because it meets safety/size standards, is on county property, and has monitoring wells to address environmental concerns such as lead capture.
Staff reported measured or expected noise impacts at each site and provided counts of affected addresses in a one‑mile radius: examples included 62 addresses for Bentonville (mixed residential), 852 for the landfill-proximate site, 663 for ESA Lane, 330 for RSW, and 329 for Rockland Park Road. Roy emphasized that the project includes plans for lead-capture and environmental monitoring and said the county would not proceed with a site that could not be made safe and monitored.
Board members asked for more detailed cost estimates and the evaluation grid used to score each site. Roy and staff said they can provide additional detail and that more granular cost and noise-data would be presented for the board’s October review. No final site approval was given at the work session; staff said they will continue the CUP process with Bentonville as the recommended site unless planning‑commission conditions or further data change the outcome.
