At last week’s Township Council meeting, roughly a dozen East Hanover residents showed up to complain about the Livingston Police Firing Range, which is located in close proximity to them.
That shooting range is used by police officers to complete required firearms training, and is located off of Eisenhower Parkway behind the Lithos restaurant, bordering the Passaic River.
The range has been in use for more than seven decades, but complaints about it appear to have ramped up recently, after New Jersey State Police (NJSP) officers were permitted to use it for training, causing an influx of hundreds of additional people firing weapons, including automatic rifles. Livingston officials said that permitting NJSP’s hundreds of troopers to use the range was a “mistake” that has since been ended, but East Hanover residents now want more changes than that. Those who spoke asked for the range to be enclosed, moved, or simply closed.
Closing the range is not an option, according to Livingston Police Chief Gary Marshuetz, who has said that the range is an invaluable asset to the department and the town. It allows the department’s 70-plus officers the ability to conduct its twice-yearly firearms training (and more for additional weapons) within the town while on-duty. As a result, they aren’t paid overtime and are available to respond to an emergency if one occurs during training.
Chief Marshuetz also noted the list of concessions the department has already made to quell noise complaints, including increasing the buffering and height of the berms around the range; not shooting in the winter due to lack of natural buffering with the leaves on trees (typically between November 1 and March 1); and limiting hours of use at the range. Previously, the range was open at all times, “24/7/365,” but it is now open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. It is closed on weekends and holidays, in addition to the winter.
Still, town officials have said that they will continue to explore ways to limit the noise coming from the range. While we know that enclosing the range would be a costly endeavor, we hope the town will seriously look into the feasibility of doing so. Perhaps the other West Essex towns that utilize the range could chip into the cost of it, as well.
As for East Hanover, adding buffering on their side of the Passaic River in the form of trees, many of which have died or been removed for development in recent years, is a way for that township to help its residents in regard to this matter.
An additional concession may be limiting the range to pistol training, as was suggested in a letter this week by a resident. It appears most of the noise complaints are due to the firing of rifles. Since only a portion of officers require rifle training (whereas each officer in the department needs twice-yearly pistol training), perhaps those specific trainings, or at least a segment of them, could be moved to another location. An even more limited time period for rifle training could be another option, as well.
One thing is clear from our conversations with officials: the shooting range is not going away. It will remain in operation, as it has for more than 70 years, providing a space for essential training for the police officers of Livingston and nearby towns. We are sure that Livingston wants to be a good neighbor to East Hanover, and vice versa. Hopefully, both sides remember this and are willing to compromise and come to a mutual understanding on how to make the situation as manageable as possible.
