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A year’s delay in completing an $82.5-million tunnel to Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport stems from contaminated soil, failure to win concessions under city noise rules and excavation equipment that slammed into remnants of an old tunnel begun in 1935, the National Post has learned.

Add to that a $10.2-million lien against the project, registered by Technicore Underground of Newmarket, the company doing the excavating, over alleged unpaid work.

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The tunnel project — a partnership involving the federal Toronto Port Authority and a private consortium — first broke ground in November 2012, with a targeted completion date of early 2014. Last week, the port authority pushed back the opening date by a year, to “winter 2014-2015,” and blamed delays on ice building up in the two main shafts that lead down to the future pedestrian tunnel.

But according to a source familiar with the project, the ice is a minor inconvenience compared with other troubles on the job.