Photo by (afm).

Yes, people are still squabbling about the proposed mixed-use development on the site of the Wisconsin Avenue Giant — a battle that is now going on its thirteenth year. But the progress of the development might not be sullied by legal struggles alone.

Michael Neibauer reports that a subsidiary of the grocery chain has admitted that the site of the proposed development at the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and Newark Street NW is in need of an environmental cleanup:

Friendship Macomb SC Inc., a Giant Food LLC subsidiary, has applied with the D.C. Department of the Environment to voluntarily clean up soil and groundwater contamination beneath 3306-3440 Wisconsin Ave. NW and 3709-3715 Newark St. NW. The application identifies chlorinated organic solvents, semi-volatile organic compounds and petroleum products as the soil spoilers.

The chemicals have been linked to a previous operation on the site, not the dry cleaner or other businesses currently there, said Sharon Robinson, spokeswoman for the Cathedral Commons project. That said, chlorinated organic solvents are commonly tied to dry cleaners. The list of semi-volatile organic compounds, meanwhile, is more than 50 strong, according to the Environmental Protection Agency — pentachlorophenol, anthracene, pyrene and hexachlorocyclopentadiene among them.

We have no idea what those are. But they don’t sound good.

Yum! This actually isn’t that shocking, however: Neibauer notes that there are eleven other active voluntary cleanup sites in the District — if you want to know where someone’s cleaning hexachlorocyclopentadiene out of the ground in the District, you can get a complete list of active and completed sites at the DDOE website.