Locating a Wal-Mart Supercenter anywhere carries built-in controversies. For one thing, such stores are enormous. The one proposed for South Spokane is 186,000 square feet. For another, Wal-Mart has become a touchstone for issues related to health care coverage, wages, cheap foreign labor, costs to government and the survival of small businesses.

That’s quite enough for any community to consider, so it’s disappointing that Spokane City Hall has added its own actions to the mix in belatedly announcing that it was the culprit in the case of a wetland’s recent disappearance from the proposed construction site.

That mystery began in February when neighbors to the proposed supercenter, which would be at 44th Avenue and Regal Street, asked what happened to the wetland, which was on the west end of the property.

They suspected it was filled in during a Regal Street upgrade last summer. A city planner said he thought it was filled in two or three years ago, but he wasn’t sure who did it.

“It just happened,” Steve Haynes told The Spokesman-Review, adding that the city wasn’t likely to track down the wrongdoer.

That wasn’t good enough for neighbors opposed to the proposed Wal-Mart. They requested a code enforcement investigation, which led to the city’s discovery that it did indeed fill in the wetland without following proper procedures and acquiring the required permit. That revelation is exacerbated by the fact that the city has dragged its feet on a public records request by a citizens group that wants to see the daily construction logs kept by street repair crews.

These missteps have served only to heighten the opponents’ suspicions that Wal-Mart’s request is a done deal and that the city’s review process is merely a formality.

Another frustrating aspect to this case is the question of whether the filled-in parcel was a wetland. A city press release calls the incident “an alleged loss of wetland area” and explains that it was never officially deemed a wetland.

It’s an important point, because wetlands assist with storm-water drainage, which has always been a nettlesome problem on that part of the South Hill.

When a church wanted to build on that site many years ago, it was deemed a wetland. A city study in 1996 said it wasn’t. Neighbors remember year-round standing water there not so long ago. A state geologist notes that wetlands can exist entirely underground.

The city should get a definitive answer, because nearby neighbors need assurances that drainage won’t become their problem.

There’s no getting around the elevated emotions prompted by this Wal-Mart proposal. The city cannot avoid that, but from this point forward it should make sure that it scrupulously follows the process to ensure fairness.