Backfilling: The practice of filling in holes left in land after the removal of below-ground structures.
Bioremediation: A method of cleaning contaminated land using bacteria to breakdown contaminants on-site, reducing the amount of soil that has to be taken off site for disposal.
Brownfield: Refers to land near urban areas that has previously been built on.
Clean Fill: Clean soil used to replace excavated contaminated soil during remediation.
Contaminated land: Land that retains residues resulting from a previous use, ranging from building materials to the chemical by-products of former industrial activity.
Decommission: Take out of use.
Demolition: The destruction and removal of buildings.
Ecology: The relationship between people, animals, plants and their environment.
Edifice: A building or structure.
Excavation: The process of unearthing buried objects.
Infrastructure: The basic structure of a system and its stock of facilities and services that allow it to function.
In-situ: Refers to remediation work carried out without moving soil or displacing existing structures or buildings. An example of an in-situ remediation process is soil vapour extraction.
Greenfield: Refers to land that has not previously been used for building or manufacturing.
Landfill: Waste products disposed of by off-site burial at licensed landfill sites (often old quarries).
Legacy: Something handed down or inherited from generation to generation.
On site: Refers to remediation work carried out on site but, in the case of soil, after excavation. An example of an on site remediation process is bioremediation or soil washing.
Perched: Held above the water table within a confined layer or structure on site.
Phenols: Group of organic compounds, soluble in water, capable of affecting the taste of drinking water.
Purging: The process of removing undesirable or dangerous substances.
Regeneration: The process of renewing old sites that have become disused or rundown and bringing them back into use.
Remediation: The process of improving and cleaning up contaminated land.
Soil washing: A technique of cleaning contaminated soils such as clay and silt on site by separating highly contaminated coarser grains from less contaminated finer participles and scrubbing the surface of larger participles to leave clean sand and gravel.