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The report by AECOM Canada Ltd. now estimated that the equivalent of 25,000 dump trucks of earth was considered hazardous waste, so laced with toxins that can produce carcinogenic vapours that they would likely need to be hauled away or intensively remediated before the area could be built on again.

A spokeswoman for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation said city council and its administrators behaved irresponsibly.

“If it was their pocketbooks on the line, I’m sure they would have done their due diligence,” Paige MacPherson said.

“This land should never have been bought — and no one should be talking about building on it now — until we know what it’s going to cost to clean up and who is going to pay.”

Photo by Aryn Toombs / Calgary Herald

When council approved the purchase of the GSL Chevrolet dealership lands at an in camera session a year earlier, a report from the city’s corporate services department noted that an environmental review was underway and that any concerns would be reported.

But a Herald investigation has found city officials already had two reports that raised serious concerns about the purchase.

“Further assessment is required to determine the extent of the contamination,” city environmental technologist Cynthia Ouellet said in a June 2008 memo to land division manager Lynne Craig.

“Since the early 1990s, no delineation of the contamination has been performed.”

A report by outside engineers completed just days before the proposed deal went to council warned the test methods used in previous soil sampling at the plant site understated the extent of the contamination.