{"id":80316,"date":"2025-07-21T09:58:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T09:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/80316\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T09:58:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T09:58:15","slug":"wandering-dallas-hensley-field-waiting-to-find-out-how-bad-the-land-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/80316\/","title":{"rendered":"Wandering Dallas\u2019 Hensley Field, waiting to find out how bad the land is"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

I drove out to Hensley Field Wednesday afternoon expecting to drive around through the homes and warehouses that surround the 738-acre campus on Mountain Creek Lake. I never expected to actually drive into Hensley Field. But the gate was open and unattended. And that\u2019s invitation enough.<\/p>\n

The Naval Air Station<\/a> \u2014 just a 7-mile, 15-minute shot down West Davis Street from the Bishop Arts District \u2014 looks exactly as you\u2019d imagine given decades of disuse. The base, owned by the city and leased to the U.S. Navy during its long stay on the Grand Prairie border, shuttered in 1998. And ever since, or close enough, the city and the Navy have been wrangling over the deeply contaminated land. <\/p>\n

Hangars, including one built when the United States entered World War II, are rotting, rusting skeletons strewn along empty runways. Street signs, with names like West Leatherneck Place and Iwo Jima, lean over deserted streets and disintegrating parking lots. Last Wednesday, a few cars were parked at the old Air Force facility near the front, just off Jefferson Street, where a man was repairing an air-conditioning unit out back. <\/p>\n

Some city garbage trucks sat near the back of the sprawl, near a barbed-wire-topped fence through which I could catch a glimpse of the sun bouncing off the contaminated lake<\/a>. A brutalist standalone structure, which looks like it had fled a 1970s community college campus, sits empty. Vines crawl up an old water tower and swallow the commanding officer\u2019s and executive officer\u2019s houses, the sole residences on the property, built in 1929<\/a> when the Naval Air Station was established.<\/p>\n

News Roundups<\/p>\n

Catch up on the day’s news you need to know.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe only two residential houses built on Hensley Field were for the executive officer and commanding officer. Both date to 1929.(Robert Wilonsky)<\/p>\n

More than three years ago, the Dallas City Council adopted the Hensley Field master plan<\/a>, which imagined several possibilities for the land, all including thousands of new homes and apartment units. Yet, and this should come as no surprise, it\u2019s still Life After People<\/a> out there. <\/p>\n

Thanks to decades of toxins, including \u201cforever chemicals,\u201d leaking into the soil and spilling into the groundwater, it\u2019s going to remain that way for the foreseeable future. Yet again, City Hall and the U.S. Navy, represented by the Department of Justice, are endeavoring to keep out of a courtroom (again<\/a>) by settling (again<\/a>) yet another legal dispute<\/a> involving just how much of the land out there is contaminated and just how much more its cleanup will cost.<\/p>\n

I actually hadn\u2019t intended on writing another piece about Hensley Field until I took a peek last week at the case jacket for City of Dallas, Texas vs. United States of America<\/a>. The city filed that suit in August 2023, alleging \u2014 not for the first time \u2014 that the Navy breached the terms of a 2002 settlement agreement \u201cby<\/a> not completing its environmental cleanup obligations within the designated time<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheThe maintenance hangar built in 1941 and abandoned in 1998 is among the massive structures needing to be erased from Hensley Field.(Robert Wilonsky)<\/p>\n

The Navy responded in May 2024 by insisting it has \u201calready spent more than $92 million on environmental remediation of NAS Dallas,\u201d far more than the $34 million it agreed to spend in 2002 to scrape the land clean and make it shovel-ready by (checks notes) 2017. As far as the Navy was concerned a year ago, its work was done out there, and it was \u201cexcused from performance under the 2002 Settlement Agreement on grounds of impracticability or impossibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only days ago, though, the city and Navy provided the court with an update that gives us a better look at where things stand with further remediation of the poisoned land. Even the council member for the district, Zarin D. Gracey, didn\u2019t know about it until I called him for comment Thursday.<\/p>\n

According to a Joint Status Report filed on June 30 by the DOJ and the Washington, D.C.-based attorneys costing Dallas\u2019 taxpayers (so far<\/a>) $850,000, the Navy has collected \u201cmore than 1,000 samples from the northern portion of the site.\u201d The Navy provided that data to the city \u2014 \u201camong others\u201d \u2014 between March and May.<\/p>\n

\"FromFrom the Hensley Field master plan, though, at present, the vision remains a little … blurry, let’s say(City of Dallas)<\/p>\n

Attorneys for the city and the DOJ won\u2019t talk due to the ongoing litigation. But on Friday, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality confirmed it\u2019s awaiting a technical report from the Navy, due in August.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for TCEQ said via email Friday that \u201cthe Navy has been collecting soil and groundwater samples at the site for a number of years as part of the remedial investigation at the site.\u201d That data\u2019s all posted to the TCEQ\u2019s website, filed under \u201cIndustrial Hazardous Waste Corrective Action\u201d due to the presence of petroleum, chlorinated solvents, volatile organic compounds and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, otherwise known as PFAS or \u201cforever chemicals.\u201d<\/p>\n

The latter remain prevalent at Hensley Field. According to a 410-page report posted to the TCEQ\u2019s site in September 2019, 22 groundwater samples were taken near hangars, fire stations and fire training areas. And those forever chemicals \u201cwere detected in groundwater at all 22 sample locations.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the Joint Status Report, the city and Navy are \u201cnow evaluating the data and considering its effect on a possible settlement,\u201d and that the parties \u201cremain optimistic that the data will allow the City of Dallas to refine its remediation time and cost estimates and help inform follow-up settlement discussions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"HensleyHensley Field Drive and Leatherneck Place, more album cover than intersection(Robert Wilonsky)<\/p>\n

The city and Navy have a virtual settlement conference scheduled for the next few weeks, according to the report, and they \u201ccontinue to be hopeful that this case can be resolved without dispositive motions or trial.\u201d<\/p>\n

The legal tussle over Hensley Field would be almost comical if it weren\u2019t so costly, infuriating and, to this point, fruitless. Last week, someone at Dallas City Hall told me, look, be patient, it also took Austin forever to transform the old Robert Mueller Municipal Airport into the $1.5-billion mixed-use \u201curban village\u201d it has become<\/a>. But not really: That airport, on 700 acres, closed in May 1999. By the end of 2004, the city council there adopted a master development agreement. They broke ground less than three years later.<\/p>\n

At least one person remains optimistic about all of this, mostly because that\u2019s one of the requirements of the job: Gracey, who worked in City Hall long before becoming a council member two years ago. As a result, he said, \u201cI know bureaucracy and red tape, and nothing surprises me in that space. That is my true living testimony.\u201d<\/p>\n

If nothing else, he has a good sense of humor about all of this.<\/p>\n

\"AA glimpse of Mountain Creek Lake from the back of Hensley Field, near the area where Dallas stores some of its garbage trucks(Robert Wilonsky)<\/p>\n

Gracey\u2019s the council member of one of Dallas\u2019 most beautiful districts, a verdant, hilly swath of the southwest with the best views in town that include Dallas National Golf Club, The Potter\u2019s House and a long stretch of anything\u2019s-possible along Merrifield Road. But nearly 800 acres of opportunity are sitting there stagnant, still, awaiting a cleanup that will cost tens of millions more and take \u2026 well, who knows at this point.<\/p>\n

\u201cWill all of Hensley Field be developed before my term ends?\u201d Gracey asked. That would be 2031, by the way, assuming he keeps running and winning. <\/p>\n

\u201cProbably not,\u201d he said. \u201cI am sure not. But I would at least like to see some movement. My preference is we get to where we can develop and remediate in the same phases. If we get to a point like that, that is moving. I remain optimistic. Just having discussions, negotiations, that\u2019s moving in \u2026\u201d He paused. \u201cA direction.\u201d He laughed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re getting somewhere. I take that as we\u2019re moving closer. Will we break ground? I don\u2019t know. But we\u2019re getting there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Again, he laughed. Because at this point, what else can you do?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I drove out to Hensley Field Wednesday afternoon expecting to drive around through the homes and warehouses that…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":80317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,11890,356,1596,14841,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-80316","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-commentary","10":"tag-courts","11":"tag-dallas","12":"tag-dallas-city-hall","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-tx","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114890639892359443","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}