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I was an RO at a county-run range and LE training facility. We had outdoor rifle, pistiol and trap/skeet ranges for the civilians and 50-yard and 100-yard rifle/pistol ranges for law enforcement as well.
Our brass was swept up and once a month it was picked up by a recycler. Customers were free to take their brass if they so desired. and if they wanted to pick and take brass from what was collected, god bless 'em, it was less weight for us to haul.
As for the lead...
EPA would come every so often and measure the lead level of the dirt backstop/berm. Occassionally they would come in with an end-loader and bulldozer and scoop up the dirt when it began to be more lead then rock, and they would replace it with fresh hard-packed dirt from god knows where.
They also had a thing that looked like a street sweeper or a zamboni that would come in and vacuum the grass field at the 50 and 100-yard ranges. presumably picking up the tons of brass that was deposited there by shooters doing IDPA/IPSC courses, LE training, etc. We had some problems because the county landscapers would come in and mow the grass and once or twice an unfired round got hit in just the right way by the mower blades and detonated, scaring the bejesus out of the landscapers.
Weird stuff...well, we didn't allow a lot of exotic ammo, of course--tracers, etc. The national guard caused a brush fire one year when they lit up the grass-covered 50-yard berm with some M60 fire. In 2005 some numbnuts kids snuck onto the impact area behind the 100-yard berm and started shooting bottle rockets over the berm towards the firing line--while it was occupied by shooters (a hot line.)! The bottle rockets elicited a cry of "Incoming fire !!!" from some of the more comedic wags on our firing line, but the kids back behind the berm dropped a few of the fireworks and started a brush fire (it was mid summer in south florida, dry as all get-out) and about 20 acres of county parks wildlife sanctuary land ended up burning. Firetrucks, bombadiers, even a few planeloads of fire-retardent ended up putting out the fire about eight or nin hours later, but the damage was done. Happily, the forest responded rather well to the clear-cutting and it grew back the following year.
Oddest stuff I found at the range...a half-dozen muzzleloading ramrods buried in the berm after sight-in for muzzleloader season; Dozens of steel penetrators from .50 BMG rounds, apparently the steel cores would violently shed their jackets when the impacted the dirt, leaving a long .40-ish cylinder of hardened steel; and quite a few spent 'beanbag' 12-ga non-lethal rounds, little square bags of canvas filled with lead shot.
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