In the general area of Project Faultless, there are signs warning about petroleum laden soil. The diesel was not directly used in the drilling, but fuelled machinery. There are no warning signs regarding radioactivity since in theory there is none. The radiation in the general area is no higher than background.
To get to the site, take the Moores Station road from highway 6, located east of Basecamp. Drive until you see the so-called monument, which looks like an ugly water tank from the distance. The coordinates of the monument are posted in State Plane coordinates.. My GPS indicated the monument is at N38 38' 03.2" W116 12' 58.3" at an elevation of 6070ft.
The graffiti on the monument (left photo) is meant to mimic the shadows of bomb victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The photo on the right shows substantial erosion. It may be caused by the shockwave of the nuclear explosion, similar to capturing a wave of sound. You can see the area around the monument is depressed a bit, the intermediate land is relatively level, then the ground drops again. There is yet another ring of erosion around the one shown at the front of the photo. Note that at the time of the blast, the dirt was nearly at the top of the monument, i.e. the dirt settled about 8 feet.
There are several of these markers in the general area. The look pretty old, so perhaps they mark the elevation prior to the blast.
Much of Nevada is covered with toxic waste from abandoned mines with owners who have gone bankrupt, dissolved the corporation, or are hiding in Beatty dealing blackjack. These sites don't get cleaned up. However, the US government is still in business though running a deficit. [Exception being William Jefferson Clinton in FY2000.] The state of Nevada had the feds clean up the dirty soil at Project Faultless. The gory details can be read in DOE/NV-743-REV-1. A few select pages from the document follow. The feds took all the contaminated soil and ...well...dumped it on the Nevada Test Site. I suppose you could call that a clean up.
The next image is from a topo map of the area. Note that the Central Nevada Test Area is known as Area 58. This may come in handy when playing Groom Lake Trivial Pursuit.
The contaminants of concern for UC-4 are the hazardous constituents in the drilling mud that was used during the drilling process. Early REECo analytical data (Table 3-2) indicated the drilling fluids consisted of a bentonite drilling mud with diesel fuel and chrome lignosulfonate additives. The extraction procedure toxicity testing of the samples collected at the mud pit indicated 8 milligrams per liter (mg/L) of chromium in the leachate. The chromium is likely from chrome lignosulfonate, a drilling mud conditioner used to minimize drilling water loss (DRI, 1988). Additional sampling conducted in 1995 by DOE (Table 3-3) confirmed the 1986 data. More data will be available to confirm or adjust the results once the investigation activities have been completed for the surface CAU No. 417 at CNTA (DOE, 1997)
More Project Faultless information:
http://ludb.clui.org/ex/i/NV3134/
http://www.nbmg.unr.edu/ScienceEducation/EarthCaches/ProjectFaultless.html
http://www.nbmg.unr.edu/slides/show.php?f=einm&&n=1.jpg
http://ndep.nv.gov/cnta/cnta.htmlhttp://ndep.nv.gov/cnta/CNTASubsurface.html
http://www.yuccamountain.org/faultless.html
http://www.atomictraveler.com/Faultless.pdf
http://www.robertwynn.com/Faultless.htm
http://ndep.nv.gov/cnta/cnta.html
http://ndep.nv.gov/cnta/CNTASurfaceUC1CMP.html
Nearby Hot Creek Valley:
http://www.usoil.us/knowledge_base