The Dugway Mtn.s and the Army
Ghosttown Bob
in the Deseret News on Wednesday (May 18th) It looks like another
historical area in danger:
Army aims to expand Dugway Proving Ground
Mountains' panoramic view a security risk, officials say
By Lee Davidson
Deseret Morning News
UFO hunters said a rumored expansion of Dugway Proving Ground
aimed to chase them away from watching whether it works on alien
spacecraft as a "new Area 51." Others said the Army merely sought land
that it had contaminated but refused to clean.
Maybe both were partially right. It turns out that rumors that
the Army is pushing an expansion are true. And it wants to annex the
nearby Dugway mountains to the south - including some heavily
contaminated lands there - because of their view.
"The mountains have a great view of the base below. . . . They
(Army officials) don't like the idea of prying eyes" at the secretive
installation, says Steve Petersen, counsel to Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah.
He said Tuesday that Bishop is working on a bill, as suggested to
him by the Army, to expand the base by annexing the Dugway Mountains
(which include a mix of public and private land). He said Bishop hopes
to introduce it later this year if concerns can be worked out among
major groups involved.
"It's a security issue with Dugway," Petersen said.
For example, he said the Army and Bishop had discussed trying to
attract extra missions to the Rhode Island-sized base, which could
create more Utah jobs. That included possibly attracting special
operations training to its vast ranges, or new "Homeland Security"
training for defenses against chemical and biological arms.
"Especially for special ops, so much of it is tactics and depends
on surprise. So they don't like the idea of someone with prying eyes
sitting on the Dugway mountains and posting what they see on the
Internet," he said.
Some UFO hunting groups recently have been doing that in their
search about whether, as they suspect, Dugway might be working with
aliens and their spacecraft.
The Army in recent months had acknowledged that it discussed
internally whether to pursue an expansion, but declined to give reasons
behind that or to disclose exactly what land it sought - or how
seriously it was pushing the expansion.
It also refused to release documents about that discussion, as
requested through the Freedom of Information Act, saying they were
exempt from release because they were "predecisional and deliberative
in nature." The Deseret Morning News has appealed that decision to the
secretary of the Army.
The Army in 1988 also made a failed proposal to expand into the
same area. At that time, it said it sought to take over lands to
protect the public from contamination there with chemical and
conventional arms. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which owns much
of the land, opposed it and argued that the Army should clean up the
public lands instead.
Petersen said Bishop intends to work with the BLM, the Army,
private landowners and others - from deer hunters to campers and rock
hounds who use the area - to address concerns before a bill is
introduced. He said the bill now is in the early stages of drafting,
and no precise boundaries have been drawn.
Among those with the biggest concerns are siblings Louise,
Douglas and Allan Cannon - who jointly own key land in the Dugway
mountains and hold many mining claims there. They have sued the Army
seeking to have it clean up chemical and other arms they say have made
their land useless. Their suits were dismissed because the family did
not file the suits soon enough after they could have learned about
contamination.
Court documents from Cannon lawsuits disclosed that the Army
attacked their family land with 3,000 rounds of chemical rounds at the
end of World War II. It also bombed the surface of 1,425 acres of
Cannon land with more than 23 tons of chemical arms.
Louise Cannon says she can support the idea of an expansion -
if her family is fairly compensated. "If they are working on
counterterrorism there, they shouldn't have any surveillance. It's our
patriotic duty to help that happen . . . but they should pay us for
what they did to our land," she said.
"We're in a Catch-22. They contaminated it. They won't clean it
up. So we can't use it, and they say it isn't worth anything," she
said. "The way this should have happened is they should have come to us
and offered to buy it. But they have never offered to pay us a dime. .
. . This (legislation) may be the only way to solve it now."
Douglas Cannon said he believes the Army is in violation of laws
calling for cleanup of contamination outside of its test ranges, and
"they want this property to cover up their mess. . . . A land grab is
what it amounts to."
Ghosttown Bob
News:
Army tests ravaged family's land
Military blasted mines owned by Utahns with tons of chemical agents
Copyright 2004 Deseret Morning News
By Lee Davidson
Deseret Morning News
Siblings Louise, Douglas and Allan Cannon inherited a gold mine.
But they say the Army is giving them the shaft, figuratively, as some
of its old, dark secrets have turned their dream of rich income into a
nightmare.
Image
Paul Barker, Deseret Morning News
They found belatedly that the Army's nearby Dugway Proving Ground
attacked the old family mines with 3,000 rounds of chemical arms at the
end of World War II. The purpose was to simulate what the Army would
face against Japanese bunkers and caves.
The Army also bombed the surface of 1,425 acres of Cannon
family-owned land above the mines with more than 23 tons of chemical
arms, including deadly mustard agent, hydrogen cyanide and the choking
agent Phosgene, plus high explosives and incendiary arms that included
napalm, butane and gasoline (from flame throwers).
"They bombed the heck out of it and contaminated our lands -
and the surrounding (public) lands. And they won't clean it up," Louise
says.
She worries that a new Army proposal to expand Proving Ground
boundaries is an attempt "to try to surround us and landlock us,"
making it impossible to access and work the mines, eliminating the need
to clean up the Cannons' land or lowering the value if the government
were to take it under eminent domain provisions.
Also, it turns out that the Cannons had been quietly discussing
the possibility of a repository for nuclear waste on their contaminated
lands if a similar plan for the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation fails.
The Dugway expansion also could block their proposal for a waste site.
It all prolongs years of frustration, lawsuits, threats and
counterthreats among the Cannons, the Army and the state of Utah and
related but unheeded pleas to Congress for help.
Family inheritance
The siblings' grandfather, Jesse Cannon, "patented," or bought,
the land from the government in the 1920s (and his father had started
working the land years earlier). Miners have sought gold, silver, lead
and copper on those claims in the Dugway mountains. The inheritors say
that when Jesse died in 1954, he did not pass along any knowledge of
Army contamination there to their father, Floyd.
Floyd made his children partial owners of the mine areas in 1957.
They became full owners when he died in 1980. Douglas, one of the
siblings, said neither his father nor grandfather ever mentioned to him
any knowledge about heavy bombardment of the area.
Louise said her father "did find some (chemical arms) canisters
in a tunnel. He didn't know what they were. He called the Proving
Ground to see if they had been doing anything in the area, and they
said they had not been over there."
Court documents later said Army records showed that the father
called Dugway several times to ask for cleanup of unexploded ordnance
and weapon fragments he found. Louise says, "He was told they were
strays from testing on the base."
Secrets begin to leak
In 1988, the Deseret News obtained and reported on Army documents
that suspected public U.S. Bureau of Land Management areas in the
"Southern Triangle" near the Cannons' land were likely heavily
contaminated by weapons testing. Also subjected to the tests, according
to the report, was the so-called "Yellow Jacket" area (the name of one
of the Cannons' 86.5 patented mining claims in the region).
The Deseret News also wrote stories about how the Army then
wanted to expand its boundaries to absorb such dangerous BLM areas,
which the BLM opposed, preferring that the Army clean up the land
instead.
The expansion never occurred. But Army officials said last month
in response to Deseret Morning News inquiries that expansion has again
been proposed internally. Officials have offered no further details,
nor specifics on what boundaries are sought.
Image
A close-up view of the photo. The family is unable now to clean up or
use the 1,425 acres of land that it owns. The land was bombed with over
23 tons of chemical agents.
Courtesy Cannon family
Despite early Deseret News stories, the Cannons said they did not
truly suspect heavy contamination of their lands until the Army Corps
of Engineers requested official permission in 1994 to enter their
property "to determine whether . . . these lands have been impacted by
unexploded ordnance."
Louise said she later happened to be at the Tooele County
Courthouse on Aug. 30, 1994, filing paperwork on a mining claim when a
worker told her the Army was holding an information session downstairs
about possible contamination on desert lands.
"I signed in, picked up the fact sheets and left," she says. "The
fact sheets said they were checking for contamination in the Southern
Triangle and on private property, but did not name the Cannon
property."
However, by signing in there, courts would later rule that Louise
had enough knowledge about potential contamination on the Cannon lands
that she unwittingly started a clock ticking toward a two-year deadline
to file any lawsuits against the government. She would not learn about
that deadline until it was too late.
Contamination aplenty
In 1996, a government contractor finished a draft study that said
the Cannon property was heavily contaminated. Visits by the contractor
had found intact, high-explosive mortar shells and burster tubes from
chemical-filled rockets and bombs.
According to court documents, the study said a full-scale removal
of munitions and debris in the Yellow Jacket claim area alone - only
a small part of the Cannons' property - would cost $12.3 million.
It also said record searches showed at least 3,004 rounds of
chemical weapons had been fired into some of the Cannon mines, and it
listed the other weapon types tested on the property. It found chemical
munitions residue and chemical agent contamination throughout the area
and said it was likely the entire 1,425 acres of Cannon property was
contaminated.
It recommended buying the land, fencing it, posting warning
signs, doing some limited munitions removal and sealing the mines.
Douglas Cannon says a gold company that had a lease on the Cannon
mines abandoned it for fear of the contamination. He said other
companies that had shown interest in leasing it also backed away
quickly once they learned about the Army's testing and contamination.
Louise says she had been anxiously awaiting the study that
confirmed the contamination, and often called the Army Corps of
Engineers seeking it. "They kept saying it would come in 30 days. Then
in another 30 days," she said.
She says one employee there finally warned her that she only had
two years from the time she learned of potential contamination to file
a suit. She called an attorney, who confirmed that.
After the Cannons saw the draft study confirming contamination,
they filed a claim with the Army, and then a lawsuit in federal court,
seeking $8.8 million in damages, the value they put on the land.
Family secrets
As the lawsuit advanced, the Army said it found an old contract
it had signed with the siblings' grandfather, Jesse Cannon, that had
allowed the military to use the Yellow Jacket area for testing for six
months. "We had never known about it," Louise says.
That contract, which gave Jesse just $1, allowed the Army to use
a portion of his property in exchange for the Army's promise to "leave
the property of the owner in as good condition as it was on the date of
the government's entry."
Louise says, "The Justice Department says he did that because he
was patriotic" and wanted to help the war effort against the Japanese.
"We'll never know," she says. "It (the contract) never mentions any
military maneuvers or testing. He wasn't allowed on the property for
the six months it was used. I don't think he knew what they planned."
Image
Rocket launchers fire near Dugway Proving Ground.
After the Army's "Project Sphinx" testing ended on that land,
documents that emerged during court proceedings show that Jesse Cannon
was not happy with what he found.
He walked the area with an Army claims officer who found the
"entire area is liberally covered with shell, rocket and bomb
fragments," and that "just outside a cabin are 10 butane-filled dud
bombs."
Jesse filed a first claim for damages, and was paid $755.48.
Later, he filed another claim for damages to mine shaft timbers from
the testing and was paid $2,064.
He filed a third claim five years later in 1950. He said while he
accepted the earlier payment in full for all claims for damages at his
Yellow Jacket mine, "I did not believe at that time that the chemical
agents used by the Army would remain in the workings and make it
impossible for me to ever operate the mine again without some sort of
decontamination."
The claim added he found there was "still a concentration of
poison gas present in the mine," and said miners who considered leasing
it "shied away when they learned of the Army's use of the mine." He
never collected money on that claim, and his grandchildren never
learned about it from him.
Regardless, Louise says, "The Army was under contractual
obligation to clean up the land, and they never have."
Court win, court loss
The younger Cannons initially won $160,937 in damages against the
Army in 2002, but the Army appealed to the 10th Circuit Court of
Appeals, which reversed the decision.
Despite the reversal, the appeals court's written opinion blasted
"the government's abysmal failure over the past half-century to clean
up the test site."
Image
It lamented that the law gave the Cannon siblings only two years
from when they learned about the possibility of heavy contamination of
their property to file suit. The Cannons had contended the clock should
have started ticking when the Army's draft study of contamination was
released in 1996 (which is also when they filed suit).
But the court agreed with the Army's assertion that it began when
Louise attended the information meeting in 1994, and when the Army
asked permission to search for unexploded ordnance. That meant the
statute of limitations allowed by law had expired, and the Cannons
lost.
Still, the court wrote, "The United States government has yet
fully to recognize and appreciate Jesse F. Cannon's contribution to
national security during World War II. The government should have lived
up to its obligations long ago. . . . The Cannons' remedy at this stage
is political, however, not legal."
Congress no help
Taking the judges' hint that only political and not legal help
was available, the Cannons started asking Congress for compensation for
their contaminated land.
"I have written to some members of the Utah congressional
delegation and to 200 different members of appropriations or other
committees who are over defense or public lands," Louise said. "I have
not received one reply."
She said she also wrote to Utah governors, the Environmental
Protection Agency and other government agencies she thought would have
an interest in cleaning up the area, especially neighboring state-owned
school trust land sections that likely had been contaminated as well.
She said none showed interest.
Louise said that during the trial, she said to a government
lawyer that maybe the Cannon family should clean up the land itself,
and keep the munitions they find. She said the government informed her
that was not allowed because it owned the unexploded ordnance, and only
the federal government could remove it. The lawyers also said they
considered her suggestion "to be a threat against the United States."
Image
The 105mm artillery projectile is like those loaded with nerve agent or
mustard gas that apparently contaminated a Utah family's property.
Because she was frustrated, she said she would return any
munitions found "in a yellow rental truck parked next to the federal
building" (sounding like the Oklahoma City bombing). She said the
lawyers also took that as a threat but didn't see leaving the old
ordnance on Cannon land as a threat.
Weak actions
Douglas Cannon said Army representatives said in court that there
are plans eventually to clean up the area. But the Army cannot do it
until it receives funding from Congress, which likely is years away.
He said when the judge asked the Army if it would be interested
in buying the land, "They said no because it is contaminated. That is
ironic, because they contaminated it. They said they didn't have the
budget to handle it," Douglas said.
Amid frustration, Louise said she once called the state to ask
what would happen if she did not pay taxes on the contaminated land and
let it revert to the government or if she simply deeded it over to the
state.
"They said, 'We would sue you.' "
"I said, 'What?' They said, 'If you let property that you knew to
be contaminated come back to the state, we would sue you to clean it
up.' I said, 'You've got to be kidding. I didn't do this.' And they
said, 'It doesn't matter,' " Louise said.
The Cannons said the only effort the Army made on their land was
to post some signs warning that it is a Formerly Used Defensive Site,
and that no one should pick up munitions they see.
Louise said the Army also accused her of stealing such
signs that disappeared. But when the Army told her the signs had been
made of wood, she said, "Anything made of wood out there disappears
quickly. They have all theses campers, hikers and motorcyclists out
there. They make little campfires. If you leave any wood out there
unattended for 24 hours, it disappears," she said.
Louise said that on another occasion, the Army accused her of
stealing an old chemical rocket booster that erosion had laid bare on
Cannon property. It had been spotted by Army crews in the area.
"They flagged it, and when they returned to Dugway they left
orders for others to go get it," she said. "Eleven days later when they
went looking for it, they couldn't find it, but saw a lot of tire
tracks around the site. So they called me and asked if I had taken it."
She says she replied, "Are you people out of your minds? No I
don't have it. There are so many people who go out there (for hiking
and four-wheeling) that it's probably sitting on some guy's mantle, and
he doesn't know what he has. That's why you need to clean up that
area."
She said she then received a lecture on how it would be illegal
for her to take such munitions if she finds them.
The waste option
Faced with not being able to clean up the property or mine it
safely, Louise said, the siblings considered another option.
"I also had several conversations with the nuclear waste people
that were trying to put that storage of nuclear waste in Skull Valley,"
she says. The state has fought for years to block an above-ground
storage area proposal by Private Fuels Storage on the Goshute
Reservation. The company is a consortium of Midwest nuclear power
utilities.
"Because they've kind of been hitting one roadblock after another
to put it in Skull Valley, the Dugway property that is owned by the
Cannons is looking better and better to them," she says.
Louise says her family's property is more stable geologically
than the Skull Valley site, and the land sits beneath a "no fly zone."
The state has fought the Skull Valley site in part by contending it is
too near faults and that a plane crash into it could be catastrophic.
If Dugway Proving Ground expansion took the Cannon property -
or surrounded it - that would almost surely prevent a private
repository there, too.
In a Catch-22
Louise says, "We're in a Catch-22. We can't get the property
cleaned up. We can't lease it. We can't even get rid of it. I even
worry we might be liable if someone is hurt out there by some of the
contamination."
Douglas says, "The property is now useless to us. No development
or potential sale can take place because of the danger and because
necessary insurance cannot be obtained inexpensively to protect
personnel from injury or death."
They worry that the latest disclosure by the Army that it is
considering expanding Dugway boundaries is aimed, at least in part, at
them and their property. (The Deseret Morning News has filed a Freedom
of Information Act request for specifics about the proposal, but the
Army has not yet responded.)
"My fear is that what they are trying to do is surround us and
landlock us," preventing access to the mines and any hope of developing
them, Louise says. "It's privately owned, and they don't want to clean
it up."
She adds, "What I want them to do is clean it up. The price of
precious minerals is going up, especially gold. It's not only a large
mine, but it has shown promise in the past" and managed to produce
$246,000 in lease fees despite the contamination worries between 1969
and 1993. Some promising veins have been identified.
But the Cannons say the jury is still out on whether they will
really get the gold mine - or just the shaft.
Corey Shuman(bimmer)
first place to start, seems like they have tried everything but a sort of
historical crusade. Maybe worth a shot. I'm not familiar with the area but
it may be beneficial to get some shots of the land to see if it may qualify
as any sort of historical site.
Corey T. Shuman
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