More bad news about the Texas Ranger Museum’s expansion site: According to state regulators, it’s not only in a cemetery, but it’s also part of a landfill.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality last week sent the city notices of violation saying that the Texas Ranger Company F headquarters and the new Riverwalk extension were built on a closed landfill without the necessary regulatory permission.

The TCEQ so far has not recommended a fine but is asking the city to prepare soil samples, delineate the boundaries of the old dumping ground and record that information in deed records by Feb. 26.

City officials said it’s uncertain whether the enforcement action will add further delays to the nearly completed Company F building, which has been in limbo for two years since unmarked graves were found along the route of nearby utility lines.

“If it’s a delay, I don’t think will be much of one,” Assistant City Manager Wiley Stem said.

City officials said they are confident that the new Company F headquarters was not built on a dump. They acknowledged, though, that trash was apparently used long ago as fill along the riverfront, where the walkway was built last year.

Stem said consulting engineers will clarify the extent of the trash deposits, using soil samples and archaeological research already performed on site.

“Based on what I’ve seen, we’ve done a lot of work down there that ought to more than tell us there’s no landfill there,” he said.

TCEQ enforcement agents investigated the site in November after receiving a complaint that Fort Fisher, the 17-acre park that houses the museum, was built on a landfill.

City officials acknowledged that archaeologists had found debris in parts of Fort Fisher, including what appeared to be burnt debris from an incinerator formerly located near the present-day Baylor University indoor football facility. But they argued that the site was never truly a landfill.

Nevertheless, TCEQ officials concluded that the city had committed three regulatory violations:

* Failure to conduct a soil test prior to developing a tract bigger than one acre.

* Failure to obtain authorization to disturb cover of a closed solid-waste landfill, in construction of the walkway.

* Failure to deed-record a closed municipal landfill.

Even before the landfill issue arose, the Fort Fisher site had been an expensive headache for the city.

Developed in late ’60s

Fort Fisher Park and the museum were developed in the late 1960s on land occupied by the historic but overgrown First Street Cemetery. Under a court order, graves in the development area were to be relocated to the west side of the cemetery, but recently it has become clear that most of the relocation involved headstones, not remains.

Since bones were discovered along in the construction area in 2007, the city has spent $2 million on archaeological work on the site, including the exhumation of more than 100 bodies.

Under an agreement with the Texas Historical Commission, the remainder of the old burying ground will be rededicated as a cemetery.

jbsmith@wacotrib.com

757-5752

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