BOSTON (AP) – The National Guard wants to end a nine-year federal ban on firing lead bullets in training at Camp Edwards, saying it believes it can avoid contaminating the Cape Cod water supply.

“We have a very high level of confidence…we will be able to train all of our soldiers in a compatible way with the environment,” Shawn Cody, director of environmental affairs for the Massachusetts National Guard, told The Boston Globe.

Guard officials are proposing several methods to keep the lead bullets, banned by the Environmental Protection Agency as a precaution in 1997, from degrading and leaching into an underground reservoir that is a major part of the Upper Cape’s water supply.

About 6,000 New England guard members train at Camp Edwards every year. They have been using tungsten ammunition that was believed better for the environment because it would not dissolve in water. But the Guard has been looking for alternatives since small amounts of tungsten were found in groundwater below the base last February.

The effects of tungsten on human health are not known, but lead can cause serious neurological damage in children.

Guard officials say the troops, who may be sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, need to train with live ammunition rather than blanks and plastic bullets. They have asked state and federal environmental regulators for permission to use the lead bullets by April on two training ranges and eventually on others.

They are considering either rubber or sand traps where the lead bullets could be collected without harm to the environment.

The Romney administration and officials of towns near the base say they generally support the idea, but want to be sure the environment is protected. The EPA is awaiting results of tests from wells drilled below the firing ranges.

“We want to proceed cautiously,” Mark Begley, environmental officer for the Environmental Management Commission, told the Globe.

The commission was created by the Legislature in 2002 to oversee the environmental impact of training at the base.

Camp Edwards, the site of military training exercises since 1911, is 100 feet or less above an aquifer that provides drinking water to the Cape. Officials have been trying to contain or clean up pollution that has reached the aquifer or is near it. An intensive clean-up began in 1997 when lead, explosives and other contaminants were found in soil and groundwater.

Lead from the base has not been found in a public drinking water supply, state officials said. Low levels of lead have been found in monitoring wells on the Massachusetts Military Reservation that includes Camp Edwards, but officials believe it came from fuel spills rather than ammunition.

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Information from: The Boston Globe, http://www.boston.com/globe

AP-ES-11-07-06 0131EST