The phrase "tainted soil" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe soil that has been contaminated or polluted in some way. Example: The farmer had to stop growing crops on his land because of the tainted soil caused by the nearby factory's toxic waste.
The cleanup involves monitoring the groundwater, hauling away tainted soil and capping the tract by building the warehouses on it, Mr. Barrett said.
With the tainted soil gone, the 23-acre site on Garvies Point Road, known as Captain's Cove, is a blank slate, rutted with bulldozer tracks and dotted with puddles of rainwater where sea gulls congregate in wet weather.
The department now believes that the facility's lead emissions tainted soil up to 1.7 miles downwind, potentially requiring a much more expensive cleanup of 5,000 to 10,000 properties, director Barbara Lee said in a conference call with reporters.
Contaminated water drains into sewers and tainted soil sits piled under tarpaulins.
More tainted soil must be removed, a process that should take only a few weeks.
Yards have been scraped of tainted soil and replanted with grass.
Surface spills could taint soil and water, and "inadequate wastewater treatment" could leave water supplies polluted.
Aerial and land pesticide spraying can taint soil, other field crops and nearby waterways.
This melamine accumulates as salt crystals in the ground, tainting the soil through which American food sucks up American nutrients.
Thirteen years after discovering soil tainted from an old underground oil storage facility on a city-owned swale along NE 55th Street near the corner of Fourth Avenue, DERM officials are still asking the city how and when it plans to clean up the mess.
"I think the whole neighborhood would be pleased if the whole thing would be considered over," said Janet Bohlen, 82, who described how the Army dug up a mortar shell and arsenic-tainted soil from her property.
