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"There's not much we can do with the land," says Douglas Cannon of the property
he owns next to Dugway Proving Ground. The U.S. Army detonated tons of chemical
munitions during World War II on and around his land, which contains 86 1/2
mining claims.
(Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake
Tribune)
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The Cannon family inherited 1,400 acres adjacent to Dugway Proving Ground
containing bombs and deadly chemicals left by Army testing, and for nearly
a decade their pleas to the government to clean up the property have been
ignored.
They say they have come up with a solution, and it will probably get some
attention. The Cannons want to turn their Tooele County mining property into
a commercial nuclear waste dump.
"We don't know what else to do," Louise Cannon said. "The Army won't clean
it up, no one answers our telephone calls and letters, and we can't sell
it or lease it. Since it's already contaminated, it seems the only thing
we can do is to turn it into some kind of a waste site."
Cannon commissioned a feasibility study that showed the property is in a
stable geological area, under a no-fly zone and fenced on three sides by
Dugway Proving Ground, a remote and secure military installation that conducts
chemical and biological defense testing. Cannon said she also contacted Private
Fuel Storage, which is seeking a license to store 40,000 tons of spent nuclear
fuel on the reservation of the
Skull Valley band of the Goshutes, and Envirocare of
Utah, a low-level radioactive waste landfill.
"We are not in favor of these materials coming into Utah or onto our property
- we want it cleaned up - but as far as we know, nobody cares," said Louise's
brother, Douglas Cannon, who also holds an interest in the property. "How
do you get anyone's attention when no one will listen?"
Deer, wild horses, hawks and chukar partridges are scattered throughout the
valleys, streambeds and ravines that abut Dugway Mountain. The property has
limestone and quartzite strata and high-grade ore, gold, lead and turquoise
deposits. Buckhorn Canyon was a stop for Pony Express riders.
The Cannons' problems began near the end of World War II when the U.S. Army
was looking for ways to fight Japanese soldiers entrenched in cave fortifications.
The 86 working mines on the family's property turned out to be a perfect
site to test high explosive, incendiary and chemical weapons.
The Army, in turn, promised in 1945 to "leave the property of the owner in
as good condition as it is on the date of the government's entry,"
according to court
documents. That promise was not kept during testing known as Project Sphinx,
when the Army dropped more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition containing incendiary
or chemical weapons on the property.
Incendiary weapons tested butane, gasoline and napalm. Lethal chemical-weapons
tests included choking agent phosgene, the blood agent hydrogen cyanide and
the blistering agent mustard. The Army also dropped conventional bombs filled
with high explosives.
The Cannons sued in 1998 to force the Army to clean up their land. But in
the fall of 2003, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the case brought
by Louise Cannon and another brother, Allan Robert Cannon.
Despite the government's "abysmal failure" to clean up the site, the court
said, the family filed their suit too late.
They had not learned of possible problems with their property until August
1994 when Louise Cannon attended a Corps of Engineers talk about former defense
sites. She had picked up fact sheets there reporting that land in the general
vicinity of her property probably was contaminated with hazardous ordnance.
"The result the law dictates in this case
does not diminish the harm to the Cannons' property, which has persisted
over half a century," said the three-judge panel, which also noted that statutes
of limitations "may permit a rogue to escape."
The Cannons' only remedy, the federal appeals court concluded, "is political."
Charles Miller, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, said the cleanup
is dependent on what Congress agrees to fund.
Louise Cannon said she began a letter-writing campaign in 1995, three years
before the family filed their lawsuit. She wrote to Utah Republican Sens.
Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett and then-Congressman Jim Hansen. Last spring,
she also wrote Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah. Douglas Cannon said he also wrote
to the Utah congressional delegation.
Scott Parker, chief of staff to Bishop, said he knows of no letters from
the Cannons.
"We get hundreds of letters and calls each day," Parker said. "If they want
to contact us, we can talk."
Hatch's aids said his staff met with the Cannons' attorney after the appeals
court dismissed their lawsuit,
but hasn't heard from the family since.
Louise Cannon said she wrote Hatch's office at that time and was unaware
of any meeting because she understood her relationship with her attorney
had ceased when the case was dismissed.
Bennett's office did not return telephone calls from The Tribune on
the matter.
The Cannons say they also appealed to then-Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt and again
when Leavitt was appointed head of the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
He also has not responded.
"We can't even pick up a spent canister on the property," said Douglas Cannon.
"It's against the law because whatever they fired onto our property belongs
to the U.S. military."
The family discussed allowing the property to revert to the state by not
keeping up tax payments, but they learned that Utah officials would charge
them for the cleanup.
State Sen. Ron Allen, D-Stansbury Park, said that although his constituents
have a history of supporting, working or serving in the military, "this is
one circumstance that they are not on the government's side. The general
sentiment
in this county is that the Army mistreated this family."
The Cannons are suffering one last indignity, they say. Dugway is considering
expanding in the Yellow Jacket area, which could surround their property,
preventing both a waste repository or gold, lead and turquoise mining that
had produced some revenue for the family until the early 1990s.
The Army has never offered to buy out the Cannons.
"Our lives have been a nightmare," Louise Cannon said. "We'll sell to anyone
- including the U.S. Army. That actually would make a lot of sense." |
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