A plan to turn 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 blueprint for the redevelopment they hoped would transform a long overlooked area of the southern half of the city.
A decades-long legal fight with the Navy that is still winding its way through court is behind the delay and costing taxpayers more money to pay legal fees to try to get the military branch to clean the site enough to allow residents to safely live there.
It’s been seven years since the Navy missed its 2017 deadline to clear Hensley Field of chemical contamination in the soil and groundwater on the 738-acre site that is about 10 miles from Downtown Dallas and borders Mountain Creek Lake. 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…