Chuck Sherred is another of many residents who have registered complaints about waves of automatic and semi-automatic gunfire noise that emanates from Security Services Northwest’s homeland security training operation on Discovery Bay.
One major difference is that while most complaints are concentrated around the bay, Sherred lives about five miles south of the bay’s head on Country Ridge Drive near Chimacum.
“I was amazed because I had been troubled by these noises for quite some time,” Sherred said.
Wanting to know if there was a shooting range nearby, he called Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. He was told there was no shooting range near his quiet rural neighborhood.
Recently, he said, his dog ran away from home for three days when the noise intensified.
“I have a dog that gets spooked,” he said.
“So it’s not only a noise that is troublesome to me and my wife. It’s the pets that are a big part of the problem.”
Residents complain
Discovery Bay residents from Gardiner to the southern part of the bay and up to Adelma Beach and Discovery Bay Heights have registered noise complaints with county commissioners and Community Development Department officials.
The sounds of gunfire are coming from Security Service Northwest’s anti-terrorism training camp on more than 3,000 acres leased from Discovery Bay Land Co., often referred to as the Gunstone-family compound.
What was once a small-scale, low-profile training base for commercial and residential security guards and guard dogs has become a paramilitary operation, county officials say, and must be reviewed as a compatible land use with surrounding residents.
Al Scalf, county Community Development director, said he met this week with Joe D’Amico, Security Services Northwest’s president, to discuss activities at the anti-terrorist training ground, equipment requirements, the company’s private and public contracts and homeland security issues.
D’Amico last week said that the operation was all about homeland security, both on land and at sea, and involved contracts with clients he declined to identify.
Because of a death in D’Amico’s family, a county inspection of the site on Thursday was delayed until this week, Scalf said.