Dugway, Utah - Military control expanding !?!

I know that dugway in Utah was/is a testing ground for munitions, but i've been told that military control of the area is expanding allong with the restricted access area. does anyone know of any other info about this area. Dugway is the area where nasa recently crashed their latest project...project genisis.

Is Dugway's expansion an alien concept?
By Joe Bauman
Deseret Morning News

Alien hunters and nerve agent contamination may be prompting Dugway Proving Ground to seek to expand its size.

Officials at the Army base are closed-mouthed about why they want to acquire a huge swath of adjacent land, mostly under control of the Bureau of Land Management. They have not even spelled out how much they want.
But they confirmed that the gigantic military reservation filed documents seeking approval for expansion studies.

The amount of land under discussion ranges from 55 square miles to 145 square miles � and if the nearby Dugway Mountains are included, that increases by 25 square miles.

Hope this helps,
B.

Deseret News

Here's an interesting story of one family's concerns re the recent proposed Dugway Proving Ground expansion.

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.
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.

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.



Deseret Morning News graphic

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."

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."

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."

Full Deseret News article


zero lift

In July of 1998 while I was home from college and staying with my parents in Provo I decided to visit my girlfriend who lived in Toole.
I decided to drive the back roads way and more or less explore a bit till I got past the eagle mountain development. As I continued on I got a call on my cell from her saying that she wasn’t going to be able to see me that day because she was going into Salt Lake to do some shopping with her sister and mom. So I decided to do a little exploring out there. I found a road called skull valley. ( At least was on that road or an adjoining road just off it, Anyway the road runs parallel to a chain link fence) I and after I had been driving on it for a while I saw these hummers and trucks in a huge convoy one of the trucks had a glass or plastic cylinder on it’s side strapped to it, that was wrapped around the base of it in a clear light blue plastic that looked like a portable decontamination chamber or something in similar appearance. After that truck passed me a hummer got behind me and on a P.A. system pulled me over. That’s the last thing I remember I must have been rendered unconscious for some time because it was just after 11 am. When I got the call from my girlfriend and the sun was down when I woke up.
When I awoke I noticed that my seatbelt was unfastened and was caught outside the door. Indicating that I may have left my car but I have no recollection of it. I drove home and told my father who worked for the air force in white sands doing some missile telemetry software development for the Athena missile project. He told it would be best for me to try to forget about it. So I have no idea what happened to me for the span of about six or seven hours.

Originally posted by grundelboy
I drove home and told my father who worked for the air force in white sands doing some missile telemetry software development for the Athena missile project. He told it would be best for me to try to forget about it. So I have no idea what happened to me for the span of about six or seven hours.

That's pretty sad of your father. I'm sorry I have nothing else to add to this thread.

strange behavior for a father, then again look where he works. From what i understand this area should be explored far more than what it is.

About that Deseret News article -

A thing you have never heard before and will never hear again -

"You're so smart. You must be from Utah".

As someone who lived and worked at DPG for 12 years, including your time frame, I find your story more than a little suspect. Skull Valley Rd. is State Rd. 196 and runs for 38 miles on a more or less N/S route from I-80 to Stark Rd. just outside the front gate of DPG.

In order for you to 'explore' even from the 'back roads' (Hwy 73) from Provo to Tooele, you would have had to drive over 15 miles, up and over Johnson Pass and down Stark Rd within 300 yards of the DPG front gate, before getting to Skull Valley. None of the back roads off of Stark run anywhere near DPG lines. Once you're out there, there is no mistaking where you are.

No roads run parallel to ANY significant length of chain link fencing, at least not on military reservations, around DPG or UTTR. You cannot 'mistakenly' end up on any DPG or any other military facility access roads by accident.

You can, however, wind up with 'lost time' in the desert out there after nibbling peyote buttons. Something that's considerably less intriguing than the story you provided.