Games Monitor

Maybe the location of the soil cleaning machines in peripheral, visible locations be due to their importance in the propaganda of the London 2012 project, the high profile cleaning up of the 'neglected, contaminated land'? The ODA never waste an opportunity to boast of the thousands of tons of soil cleaned and industry awards won etc.

As you point out, this rhetoric of contamination, and its justification for demolishing and digging up everything, only appeared with the Olympics and seemed to cause no concern before. It's only the extraordinary upheaval of the whole landscape in double-quick time that makes it necessary.
Generations of plotholders on the Manor Gardens and Waterden Road allotments in the heart of the Olympic site lived long and healthy lives growing much of their food on the very ground that now seems to be too dangerous to run on...

Of course, the contamination story doesn't stop at the boundaries of the park anyway. Most of Hackney Wick is ex-industrial land, and no doubt the ground under Leabank Square would prove to be 'highly contaminated' if subjected to the same exhaustive testing and deep borehole investigation as the Olympic Park. And how come we never hear anything about contamination on the Stratford City site?

Look what happened with the 'relocated' Manor Garden Allotments site - which the LDA had assured everyone was perfectly good land. Way outside the Olympic zone, on a patch of meadow where horses had grazed for 40 years, it turned out to require the replacement of 10,000 tonnes of soil to be deemed safe enough for use. Same story with the hastily moved Canoe Slalom course out at Broxbourne.