In 2008, Olympia bought the property at 318 State Ave. from the Washington State Department of Transportation for about $1.28 million, according to records. As a condition of that sale, WSDOT agreed to use the proceeds to clean up the site.Under the state’s ownership, the property had included a testing laboratory and various machine shops. The soil and groundwater were polluted with chemicals such as lead, arsenic, vinyl chloride and an industrial solvent called trichloroethene (TCE), according to documents.
