At the bottom of a ravine in Forbes State Forest, Eric Harder stood above clear water running over what looked like the perfect stream.
“Blue Hole Creek is, I would say, Southwest Pennsylvania famous,” said Harder.
The stream flows east off a ridge, passing a popular backpacking trail, and offers the public a well-used swimming hole to cool off in during the summer.
“Me personally, I swim in Blue Hole, or I used to at least,” said Harder, who works at Mountain Watershed Association, a local environmental watchdog, as the Youghiogheny Riverkeeper. “I would filter water when I go backpacking. But beyond that, there’s miles of what used to be really good trout fishery.”
Harder had to use the past tense because there’s not much trout fishing in Blue Hole Creek anymore. In 2021, the state Department of Environmental Protection received a complaint about a milky white color in the streambed.
In 2023, the state sampled Blue Hole and found the formerly “exceptional value” stream was now contaminated with metals and had ‘very low’ numbers of aquatic insects.
“They noted that it basically has high concentrations of lead and cadmium,” said Harder. “And so they looked basically in the watershed to see what it could be, and they saw a shooting range.”
The Highlands Sporting Clays is a shooting range near Seven Springs ski resort in Fayette and Somerset counties. The club’s owner is also locally famous: Bob Nutting, who also owns the Pittsburgh Pirates. The club is part of Highland Ventures, LLC, a real estate and hospitality company that is part of Nutting’s Ogden Company.
The DEP found lead from spent ammunition at the shooting range was getting into Blue Hole Creek. The DEP also found excessive levels of cadmium, aluminum, manganese and zinc.
There are no federal or state laws regulating shooting ranges like Highlands. But federal and state environmental laws forbid companies from causing pollution in rivers and streams.
Harder said a lack of regulation is a big reason this pollution happened.
“There’s no permit that says, can we put a shooting range here? And for me, it’d be a no-brainer to say this highly pristine stream is the absolute worst location (for a shooting range) because of scenarios like this,” Harder said.
Lead shows up in Blue Creek
The EPA has recommendations for preventing this type of lead contamination. They include suggestions for range design, cleanup of spent ammo and soil treatment.
Treating soil is important because lead dissolves more easily in water that is acidic. When it rains, soil can wash into waterways. Harder thinks that’s what happened at Highlands.
“It’s really the lead shot that’s on the soil that is more acidic than it’s supposed to be that allows it to run off,” Harder said.
A 2008 environmental survey of the club grounds found the soil to be acidic, with a pH between 4.6 and 5.0. (The lower the pH, the more acidic a substance is.) The EPA recommends that shooting range soil be between 6.5 and 8.5.
- New coal mine could dump 2.8M gallons treated wastewater into Laurel Highlands trout stream
- Climate change’s impact on native brook trout in the Laurel Highlands
To counteract acidity, the EPA recommends treating soil at shooting ranges with lime. It also recommends regular retrieval of spent ammunition.
It’s unclear how closely the club followed these protocols. The club did not respond to multiple requests for comment. According to DEP documents, the agency found “significant quantities of lead shot” lying on the ground at the club.
Harder said he flew a drone over the site last year and saw the same thing.
“You could see just a hue of, like, the orange or pink shells still on the ground; it looks like a giant yard of no vegetation and almost bare ground,” Harder said.
Harder and his team at Mountain Watershed Association began sampling the stream on their own.
“When we got our lab results back from the water sample that we collected, it showed above 400 parts per billion for lead,” Harder said.
For reference, the action level in federal drinking water standards for lead is only 15 parts per billion. Learning these results was an unpleasant surprise for Harder, who had only recently hiked through the area with his family.
“I was out here … drinking the water with my wife and my kids,” said Harder. “We basically filled up a whole day’s worth of water from Blue Hole, and now we’re drinking an entire year’s worth of lead in one 24-hour setting.”
The Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which oversees state forests, eventually put up signs warning hikers not to use the stream’s water.
Lead’s toll on public health
Dr. Marilyn Howarth, an occupational and environmental medicine physician at the University of Pennsylvania, said lead presents a serious problem at gun ranges because every time a gun is fired, it leaves a trail of lead-filled dust
“If someone repeatedly shoots in one place, such as a shooting range, the ground there will become extremely contaminated,” Howarth said. “When it rains, then that water will carry the lead particles into a nearby stream or down a hill into another area, contaminating a larger range of soil and therefore providing the opportunity for exposure to that many more animals.”
Lead is a neurotoxin and is especially dangerous for children and pregnant mothers. Howarth said lead is hazardous to both humans and other animals because it resembles other elements the body needs, like calcium.
“Lead is a heavy metal, which means that to the body, it looks a lot like other metals,” Howarth said. “Calcium’s in our bones. It’s used in a lot of our metabolic processes. And lead looks a lot like calcium to the body. So [lead] is taken up in a lot of places, and in fact, stored in our bone, stored in our teeth.”
Once in our bodies, lead can interfere with the brain and the rest of the nervous system, Howarth said.
The plan to clean up the Highlands Sporting Clays
The DEP issued a notice of violation for the club in 2025. The agency said that shooting at Highlands Sporting Clays has been suspended indefinitely while the club cleans up the site.
The club submitted a cleanup plan for one of its three courses, and a stream and wetland sampling and analysis plan, which DEP approved on Thursday, Oct. 8.
The company will soon install charcoal filter socks to “reduce the migration of lead shot” on the premises, the DEP said in an email.
The club has removed surface shooting debris, including “broken and whole clay pigeons, wads and shell casings, and lead shot. The shooting debris was properly disposed of and the lead shot will be recycled,” DEP also said.
Highlands has collected soil samples from its courses, and the DEP said it “is awaiting the submission of the results of that sampling.”
No trout, no drinking, no swimming
As a result of Blue Hole Creek’s contamination, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission removed the stream from its trout-stocking program earlier this year, though Blue Hole remains open to public fishing.
Harder is worried about the lasting effects of contamination, as lead works its way into the food chain as it gets deposited into the streambed.
“That’s where all the macroinvertebrates, all the bugs live; that’s where all the fish, if they were here, would be spawning and laying their eggs, eating those bugs,” Harder said.
Michael Parker, a spokesman for the Fish and Boat Commission, said the stream is typically stocked with about 300 trout, “among the smallest trout stockings” the agency performs.
“Because of the small size of the stocking to begin with, and the high levels of lead, the removal from the trout stocking program was done out of an abundance of caution,” Parker said in an email. “The stream remains open to public angling, but it [is] no longer stocked with trout.”
Harder said it was “unfortunate” the state could no longer stock the stream because of Blue Hole Creek’s popularity with anglers. “It’s very close to the state parks, very close to busy highways, and [it has] roads that can easily get you here.”
There have been other effects of the contamination: Swimming hole websites caution people against swimming in Blue Hole.
For Heath Brown, of nearby Confluence, that’s a shame.
Brown hasn’t been swimming there since lead was found in the water. But he said the stream is – or was – best enjoyed in the heat of summer.
“Summertime, when it’s hot, and in July, when there’s not a lot of water, this always has [water],” Brown said. “When you come here, the water is always nice and cool, and it was crisp, and when you look at it, it’s all blue-looking, and beautiful.”
