A FAMILY run business at Pool believes it has the answer to bringing much of the area's contaminated land back into use using methods with a low carbon footprint.

Vast areas of land within the South West carry the legacy of hundreds of years of hard rock mining, with Camborne and Redruth being particularly affected.

While in its day, the industry sustained thousands of jobs and created vast wealth for mine owners, it also left huge swathes of land contaminated with heavy metals, chiefly arsenic, lead, copper and zinc.

Modern developers face major clean-up bills on brownfield sites before they can safely build new homes and gardens.

Current site remediation uses a practice known as "strip and dump", where between half a metre and a one metre depth of soil is removed and transferred by lorry for disposal.

The process has a high carbon footprint, requiring large lorries to remove the contaminated soil and return with clean certificated soil. There is also the problem of how to dispose of the contaminated soil, with landfill being the main option.

However, ASI (Approved Site Investigations) Ltd, at Pool, is already using a new process which it says offers an alternative way of remediating contaminated land.

The business is run by Camborne School of Mines graduate Jeremy Williamson. Jeremy's solution is a process called the land grid method, or LGM, where the majority of existing land is left on site, and the contaminated soil is contained beneath a special, geotextile cover and plastic meshing system.

About a quarter of a metre of clean soil is put on top, raising the overall height of the land by that height, but negating the need for the removal of large amounts of soil.

Jeremy said: "The LGM is primarily intended for lawned gardens and open areas of land such as parks, in fact anywhere where fruit and vegetables will not be grown for consumption, for example the new Heartlands project at Pool."

"While "strip and dump" is an extremely costly practice, which generates a high carbon footprint, the LGM is a simple, common sense approach to the problem that promotes a low carbon footprint, reduces costs and reduces the strain on landfill sites." The LGM is designed for sites with a heavy metal contamination problem.

ASI has invited Cornwall Council to consider the LGM a solution, but so far without success.

Jeremy added: "Because of the costs and the difficulties of the "strip and dump" method, some developers are avoiding the problem by just gravelling or slabbing over land that could have been gardens, this in turn leads onto environmental impact issues, primarily the effect on local wildlife food sources. We need to be able to encourage green sustainable development if at all possible."