Plan to put homes on former Dallas airfield stands as the city’s battle with the Navy continues

DALLAS (Tribune News Service) — A plan to turn a contaminated former Dallas Navy airfield into a neighborhood of 6,800 new homes continues to be delayed two years after officials approved a plan for the redevelopment they hoped would transform a long overlooked area in the south of the country. half of the city.

A decades-long legal battle with the Navy, which is still going to court, is behind the delay and is costing taxpayers more money to pay legal fees to try to get the military branch to clean up the site enough to allow residents to live there safely.

It’s been seven years since the Navy missed its 2017 deadline to clean up Hensley Field of chemical contamination in the soil and groundwater at the 738-acre site, which is about 10 miles from downtown Dallas and borders the lake Mountain Creek. The Navy leased the property from the city from 1949 to 1999, and the cleanup agreement was the result of a 2001 lawsuit the city filed 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 film studio. Dallas sued again in 2023, arguing that the Navy’s delay in environmental cleanup put the city’s redevelopment plans in limbo, diminished the site’s market value and illegally infringed on the city’s property rights.

“This has been a long discussion and the fact that we’ve gotten to a point where we’ve developed a master plan is progress,” said Zarin Gracey, a Dallas council member who represents the area. “The last update I got was that they are still going through negotiations on the fix and I’m trying to be patient with what may come. But I’m looking forward to it, we all are.”

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

No clear timeline has been announced for when Hensley Field will be clean 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 lead to 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 a variety of warehouses in the city, including old police cars and Confederate-era monuments.

David Bennett, a Navy spokesman, declined to comment when asked by The Dallas Morning News if the military branch had any estimate on when the cleanup would be completed and how much was being 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 US Army to train reserve pilots. A Naval Reserve Air Station was built in 1941, administration of the field was transferred to the Navy in 1949.

The Navy agreed in a 2002 court settlement with Dallas to pay the city more than $18 million and clean up the site by 2017. City officials in 2022 said the Navy had spent $92.4 million in cleanup costs , that the soil was clean enough to meet Texas Commission on Environmental Quality standards, but the groundwater contamination had not yet been fully addressed.

The Navy, in a May 2024 response to the city’s lawsuit, said it should not be held to “perform under the 2002 settlement agreement for reasons of impracticability or impossibility.”

The Navy said it tried to meet the 2017 deadline and speed up the cleanup process. But strategies to do so have been ruled out, in part because of ground conditions. Pursuing other groundwater cleanup options would be “extremely expensive” and unlikely to reduce how quickly the site was cleaned up.

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

“PFAS remediation would greatly increase the cost of performance of the 2002 regulatory agreement, such that it would cause extreme and unreasonable hardship and expense, and would constitute a fundamental change to the agreement,” the Navy’s response said, arguing that monitoring 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 discussions about how to settle the case without a trial since before the 2023 trial and “have continued those discussions on a bimonthly schedule during this litigation.” Both sides anticipate the lawsuit will go to trial if a settlement or other resolution cannot be reached, the filing said.

An updated status report was due by Dec. 13, court records show.

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