A plan to transform a contaminated former Navy airfield in Dallas into a neighborhood with 6,800 new homes continues to be delayed two years after officials approved a redevelopment project they hoped would transform a long-neglected area of ​​the city’s southern half.

A decades-long legal battle with the Navy which is still going through the courts is causing the delay and costing taxpayers more money to pay the legal fees needed to try to get the military branch to clean up the site enough to allow residents to live there in complete safety.

It’s been seven years since the Navy missed a 2017 deadline to rid Hensley Field of chemical contamination of soil and groundwater at the 738-acre site located about 10 miles from downtown Dallas and bordering Mountain Creek Lake. The Navy leased the property to the city from 1949 to 1999, and the cleanup agreement was the result of a 2001 lawsuit filed by the city against the federal government, citing the contamination as a breach of contract.

The Dallas City Council approved an estimated $390 million, 20-year plan in 2022 to transform Hensley Field into a mixed-use neighborhood that could house about 12,000 residents. The plan included new parks, waterfront trails, shops, restaurants, a marina, a school and a movie studio. Dallas sued again in 2023 arguing that the Navy’s delay in environmental cleanup has put the city’s redevelopment plans in limbo, diminished the market value of the site and illegally violated the city’s property rights.

“This has been a long-standing discussion and the fact that we have gotten to a point where we have developed a master plan is progress,” said Dallas Council Member Zarin Gracey, who represents the area. “The last update I received was that they were still in negotiations on corrective measures and I am trying to be patient about what might happen. But I’m looking forward to it, we all are.

On November 13, the City Council approved increasing its contract with Washington, D.C.-based law firm Covington & Burling to $850,000, an increase of $300,000, to continue the legal fight. The city initially agreed to a $100,000 contract in June 2023. The November increase was the third contract amendment approved by council.

No clear timeline has been announced for when Hensley Field will be free of contaminants such as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS. The compounds can be dangerous to humans, and studies have shown they could cause increased risks of cancer, liver damage, pregnancy complications, birth defects, and other health effects. according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Parts of Hensley Field are used for an assortment of city storage, including old police cars and Confederate-era monuments.

David Bennett, a Navy spokesman, declined to comment when asked The Dallas Morning News whether the military branch had an estimate of when the cleanup would be completed and how much was spent on the effort. Nick Starling, a Dallas spokesman, said the city declined to comment because of the pending lawsuit.

The city purchased the Hensley Field site in the late 1920s and leased it to the U.S. Army to train reserve pilots. A Naval Reserve Air Station was constructed in 1941, administration of the land transferred to the Navy in 1949.

The Navy agreed, as part of a 2002 legal settlement with Dallas, to pay the city more than $18 million and clean up the site by 2017. In 2022, city officials said the Navy had spent $92.4 million in cleanup costs and the ground was clean enough to meet the needs. Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Standards, but groundwater contamination has not yet been fully resolved.

The Navy, in a May 2024 response to the city’s lawsuit, said it should not be required to “comply with the 2002 settlement agreement on grounds of impracticability or impossibility.”

The Navy said it was working to meet the 2017 deadline and speed up the cleanup process. But strategies to achieve this have been ruled out, in part because of soil conditions. Moving forward with other options to clean up groundwater would be “extremely expensive” and would likely not reduce the timeliness of cleaning up the site.

The Navy also argued that PFAS cleanup was not on the table when the 2002 settlement was reached.

“PFAS relief would significantly increase the cost of enforcing the 2002 Settlement Agreement such that it would result in extreme and unreasonable hardship and expense and would constitute a radical change to the Agreement,” the response states. of the Navy, saying monitoring the natural decline of PFAS in groundwater could require at least 100 years to meet state and federal environmental standards.

A June court filing said the two sides had been in talks about how to resolve the case without a trial since before the 2023 trial and “continued those discussions on a biweekly schedule during this litigation.” Both parties expect the lawsuit to go to court if a settlement or other resolution cannot be reached, the document states.

An updated status report is expected by Dec. 13, according to court records.