London praised for Olympic-sized cleanup

London has been praised for an Olympic-sized cleanup after they successfully completed one of the world's largest brownfield regeneration projects in recent years.

Environmentalists and governing bodies have praised the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games for the cleanup of former industrial land in Stratford, London. The project included the soil remediation and redevelopment of more than 200 hectares (500 acres) which was previously used for industrial industries such as chemical and fertilizer works, landfills and depots.

The previously industrial part of London had left a legacy of severe soil and groundwater contamination. This proved to be one of the primary challenges for Olympic planners, as they battled to make the contaminated land suitable for redevelopment.

One such facility that required substantial planning was the Zaha Hadid-designed London Aquatics Centre (LAC), which has become one of the prominent 'green' buildings in the Olympic park. The building was a brownfield redevelopment project, and also presented a significant remediation challenge as it was located on a former industrial site.

Subsurface foundations for the LAC were to be completed by July 27, 2009, exactly three years before opening day. But the setbacks came early in the project, and early analysis proved that using dual-phase vacuum extraction (DPVE) to remove the light non-aqueous phase liquid (LNAPL) would not be enough.

Planners therefore chose situ-enhanced bioremediation to clean up this portion of the site, which uses indigenous microbes to aerobically biodegrade petroleum hydrocarbons in-place. ORC Advanced was also applied because it is highly efficient as it requires no permanent well installation, above-ground piping or mechanical equipment and after application, no operational costs or further site disturbance.

The remedial cleanup of the Aquatics Centre was a great success, and the project was completed months ahead of schedule. Not only is the new building a feat of engineering with pioneering environmental attributes, it has also been built on top of severely contaminated land, which makes the project a huge success all around.

Posted by Joseph Hutton