London 2012 . . . a study in greening
Britain is going all the way out to make sure that the London Olympics next year becomes a memorable part of history. Nothing has been left untouched, everything has been touched --- for people to go back home, once the Games are over, with the feeling that London is a place which keeps reinventing itself. That is not, if you think about it, unusual. Quite a few centuries ago, it was Samuel Johnson who pronounced the unambiguous judgement that one who is tired of London is tired of life. London 2012 does not promise to be tiring, or tiresome, at all. You have to look at merely one of the many aspects of the Olympics preparations to comprehend conditions as they happen to be a year prior to the commencement of the Games. The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), in association with a number of other bodies, has made sure that everything is in place. Take the matter of Atkins, the multi-skilled and multi-local design firm which has been working round the clock to make the Olympics venue an ideal point, indeed a symbol, of all that is good about the environment. It is the greening of the place and by extension greening of London that has lain at the core of what Atkins has been doing. In effect, the making of the Olympics venue is something more than an immediacy. In the longer term, London 2012 is the creation of a whole new neighbourhood for Londoners, the core idea here being regeneration. No fewer than 450 people were put to work by Atkins on cleaning up the entire Olympics area, before it became the Olympics venue. And this sorting out of the place began in 2005, which was a huge hint of the seriousness which the ODA was attaching to the preparations. A major component of the preparations for London 2012 was the demolition of 200 buildings that had been at the site, which in itself used to be a pretty run-down place. Interestingly, as an initial measure, as much as 95 per cent of the material subjected to demolition was re-used on the site through analysis and examination. On a larger scale, the soil removed from the site, meticulously before the actual work on the building of the stadium began, went into treatment at what was known as a soil hospital. Such an operation was necessitated by the fact that what is today the Olympics site was for years a rather abandoned stretch of land, bleak and dreary to all intents and purposes. Contamination was removed and the soil, thus treated to detailed chemical examination, was put back into use. What the authorities have done was, first, undertake the task of reclaiming the river Lea through bringing it back to the kind of brilliance which must have been its original image; and, second, relocate the animal life of the pre-Olympic days in temporary new habitats until such times as they could be taken back to their original abode. Observe the figures: 100 toads, 330 lizards and 4,000 newts were relocated. They will, as Atkins officials made it a point to let the visiting foreign media know, come back to the old, albeit totally spruced up place once the Olympics are over in 2012. The construction of the stadium proper as also other structures, such as the velodrome, was undertaken with an eye on the future. Read that as regeneration, for these facilities will be put to maximum use for Londoners in the years ahead. Besides the permanent structures --- stadium, velodrome, aquatics centre --- a good number of temporary structures, with a life span of 72 days, have also come up. They will be pulled down when the lights in the Olympic stadium are put out at the end of the show. And here is another point of note: the ventilation factor for the Games covers both natural and mechanical aspects. Only 14 per cent of the premises, which means the tents, will be equipped with air-conditioning systems. That is not bad, is it? Indeed, London 2012 promises to be a study in promoting the greener aspects of life. It will be a spur to environmental programmes elsewhere.
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