> And "contaminated land"? How contaminated are we talking about here? It's crippling to any hope of widespread brownfield redevelopment that something so minimally invasive could be shut down by nebulous, ill-defined contamination. Perhaps we need a standard grading system for land contamination instead of just lumping gasoline and arsenic in the same category.

If the article is accurate, the cleanup was completed by January 2024, and first phase of work started September 2022. So who knows how long cleanup took, long enough to mention, but less than 1.5 years. The city website about the project [1] says the contamination was removed in 2022, so maybe not very long at all. The site's former use was as an electrical substation, so I'd expect soil contamination from spilled transformer oil, and similar things; some nasty stuff, but usually not a lot of it.

Sounds like the root cause of delays is availability of appropriate chargers, and probably a lack of priority. Also, 8 EV chargers doesn't sound like much, but if they're level 3 chargers, that's a lot of power if 8 cars plug in at the same time, which necessitates a bit of engineering and oversight. If it were 8 level 2 ev chargers, that would probably be a quick and easy install.

[1] https://www.seattle.gov/city-light/in-the-community/current-...