Citing a worldwide threat to the security of the United States from hostile nations, the Army wants to renovate Dugway Proving Ground's old Baker Laboratory to increase defense testing against biological agents.

The proposal and the Army's most recent environmental assessment, released last month, already are generating criticism from watchdog groups about what they say is Dugway officials' lack of openness about numerous health, safety and environmental issues related to use of the decommissioned lab, built in 1952 to develop biological weapons.

The Utah chapter of the Sierra Club and the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah both sent comments in April in response to Dugway's draft environmental assessment of the project.

Citizens Education Project director Stephen Erickson also sent Dugway officials a letter last April, alleging that there has been a "general lack of specificity and details regarding what is certainly a major expansion of Dugway's capacity to conduct testing of agents of biological origin."

Erickson singled out in his letter Dugway's interest in using vaccine strains of anthrax during tests as one area of interest needing more disclosure.

In an interview Friday, Erickson said the state only has limited oversight at Dugway, making it difficult to monitor activities that impact the environment or health and safety of workers at the remote Rhode Island-size Army base.

"So, someone needs to pay attention to it," Erickson said about Dugway's plans for the Baker Lab. "I guess it has fallen on us. ... We will always argue for greater transparency."

The Army's response to his letter said that the most recent version of the Baker Lab environmental assessment presents a "concept plan, not a detailed final plan" and that currently the proposal is more rudimentary than a final plan.

The other two watchdog groups expressed multiple concerns about health, human safety and environmental issues, all of which the Army essentially said have been addressed or will be in a manner that meets or exceeds federal and state requirements as the project moves forward.

Dugway spokeswoman Paula Nicholson said the Army tries to strike a balance in meeting public disclosure requirements and releasing too much information.

"We have to protect our customers and the United States," Nicholson said in a telephone interview Friday.

Those customers are tenants at Dugway that help the Army fulfill the base's overall mission of testing chemical and biological defense systems.

Over about 20 years Nicholson has raised her family while living on the base, although she no longer resides there.