Army aims to expand Dugway Proving Ground

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."

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