A Practical Approach for Site Investigation

Abstract

Given the volume of work and costs related to soil investigations, strategies and techniques for the investigation of potentially contaminated sites have been developed and have been standardized, both on a national as well as on an international level. Investigating soil contamination is not an easy task, since contaminants are generally distributed highly heterogeneous in the soil. It is important to focus on the objectives for site investigations. In this chapter three kinds of investigation phases have been described, these are the Preliminary Investigation, the Exploratory Investigation and the Main Investigation. The Preliminary Investigation, this is the most essential phase of the whole investigation, is a desk study combined with a site visit. A Preliminary Investigation can be performed both for sites where contamination is expected and for sites that are probably uncontaminated. The main objective of the Exploratory Investigation is to proof that the assumptions made in the Preliminary Investigation are indeed correct. The goal of the Main Investigation is to provide the necessary information to deal with the contamination on a cost-efficient basis. The Main Investigation is an iterative process, where after each step the question has to be answered if the available information is ‘fit for purpose’. Moreover, different sampling patterns and techniques are discussed in this chapter.