B.C. developer suing Ottawa after discovering parcel of land is filled with WW II explosives

As environmental hazards go, these couldn't be more deadly. Live military ordnance, everything from hand grenades to artillery shells, litter the Canadian landscape and the waters off its east and west coasts.

Now the federal government is facing a lawsuit from a B.C. developer who claims unexploded ordnance (UXO) on its property adjacent to a Second World War-era army training camp in the north Okanagan has made it unsafe to build there.

K&L Land Partnership has filed a claim in B.C. Supreme Court saying it paid $15 million for a 546-hectare parcel overlooking Kalamalka Lake near Vernon in 2005, with plans to subdivide it and build homes, CBC News reports.

According to the an item in Maclean's Magazine, the company said it spent $28.5 million on its planned subdivision before development was halted in 2011. That's when the Vancouver-based company learned from the Department of National Defence that the property contained an unknown number of unexploded bombs, mortar shells and grenades, rendering it useless for development.

K&L's land was next to the former Vernon Military Camp, used for weapons training for soldiers being sent overseas between 1939 and 1945, CBC News said. It's still operating, hosting primarily military cadets.

[ Related: WW II explosives trigger lawsuit by B.C. developer ]

The company's statement of claim alleges the government committed an "ongoing unlawful act" by abandoning the explosives and failing to warn of the danger, according to Maclean's.

But in its statement of defence, Ottawa said it's a case of "buyer beware." It wasn't exactly a secret that the area was a longtime military training site and firing range (used for mortar practise until 1971), which K&L would have discovered if it had done its homework.

The existence of UXO on the land was "notorious, a matter of public knowledge in the community of Vernon and its environs, and have been and continue to be widely reported in local and national newspapers," the government argued, according to Maclean's.

Indeed, eight people have died and three been injured since 1945 by UXO on the training camp site and surrounding land, including two boys killed in 1963, when they tried to pry open a shell near Vernon, CBC News said.

In the statement of defence, the government "denies that it intentionally concealed facts relating to the possible existence of UXO in the lands."

The government has swept the area for UXO several times, the last in 2007 when it used a helicopter equipped with a specialized metal detector.

But K&L's lawyer, Howard Shapray, said the company never received disclosure from the government about the land's history before it made the purchase, hearing from Ottawa only in 2011.

"The government has a variety of legal duties to clean up the site, remove the dangerous and hazardous material," Shapray told CBC News.

"While it is impossible to say exactly how many unexploded explosive ordnance [UXO[ may remain in the ground at Vernon, assessment work has confirmed the presence of munitions or related components at various locations," Defence Department public affairs officer Kathleen Guillot said in a statement, according to CBC News.

"Since 1960 DND has implemented several clearance operations, and have removed numerous UXO items."

Unexploded military ordnance is a worldwide problem, especially in conflict areas such as Afghanistan, Cambodia, Vietnam and Iraq.

Live shells dating back to the U.S. Civil War in the 1860s are still being found. In 2008, a gunpowder-filled cannonball exploded and killed a Virginia Civil War buff as he was restoring it, The Associated Press reported.

Farmers in France and Belgium continue to plough up artillery shells from the First World War that began almost a century ago. They've dubbed it the "iron harvest." Special disposal teams deal with tons of old poison-gas shells every year.

And the legacy of the Second World War's aerial bombing campaigns are dug up in Europe's cities. In 2010, three people died and six were injured as a bomb-disposal team tried to defuse a 500-kilogram bomb discovered by construction workers in Goettingen, Germany, BBC News reported.

[ Related: 1940s-era bomb found in southern Alberta field ]

In Canada, the government's UXO web site says there are hundreds of UXO "legacy" sites across the country, plus 1,100 off the waters of the East Coast and another 26 off the Pacific Coast.

"As Canada's population increases, it is expected that people will come into more frequent contact with UXO on properties that were at one time remote, and therefore presented little risk," the UXO site's introduction says.

"It is important to understand that the limits of existing UXO detection technology means that no UXO legacy site can ever be declared completely hazard-free."

Postmedia News reported last year that Treasury Board documents show the government estimated it could cost between $180 million and $524 million to deal with UXO cleanup.