F E AT U R E By Ruth Holmes
Scratching the surface – soil remediation in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park
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As developments accelerate around the Park, the project’s head of landscape Ruth Holmes explains why getting the soil right for 2012 has left an important legacy 1. Aerial photograph of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park 2019 – 7 years on since the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games showing the establishment of the landscape and the iconic venues. © LLDC
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https://www.olympic. org/news/the-greatestshow-on-earth
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rom the sky, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park can be seen with its blanket of green and gold divided by ribbons of blue and grey, the setting for the ‘greatest show on earth1’. So much has been written about the Park and the legacy of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, yet the story goes much deeper when you scratch the surface.
The site was previously heavily polluted following a century of industrial use. A challenge central to the 2012 vision was to provide a significantly improved soil base to the Olympic Park (now Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park) as a starting point for the planting that would define the 2012 Games, as well as inspire a green legacy beyond. At an early stage in the planning, crucial land reclamation
decisions were made to include a complex and arduous process of soil washing, decontamination and production which would take years to complete. The site soils contained potential chemical contaminants (such as heavy metals, hydrocarbons, asbestos), physical contaminants (glass, nails) and biological contaminants (Japanese Knotweed) which needed to be extracted through 27
