Overview
Population growth and expansion of urban areas have
established the need to regenerate brownfield sites to
new beneficial uses. Brownfield sites are usually former
industrial or commercial sites and these sites are often
derelict and contaminated or polluted in some way.
Conservative estimates predict approximately 340,000
contaminated sites in Europe require some degree of
remediation. The typical approach to establishing new
economic uses as recent as 5-10 years ago was to
excavate the contaminated soils and import new soil.
This approach is no longer economically feasible due to
rising landfill taxes and haulage costs. Instead,
contaminant remediation must be implemented to
achieve partial or complete remediation of the site.
Remediation is a first step to redevelopment and,
currently, very little information exists about the end
states of soils after remediation or their suitability for
reuse. Previous studies have shown that heavy oil
contamination may reduce the compressive and shear
strength of soils, but the degree to which remediation
restores soil strength, if at all, has not been studied
systematically