Certainly, it changes it. I guess I would put it another way. I would ask whether there are certain benefits to engineering certain types of change. For example, the groundwater research was undertaken in the hopes that remediation of the toxicity would occur during groundwater flow. If that had been borne out, then you might encourage more groundwater flow and less surface water flow in the reclaimed landscape.
I look at it more as an opportunity--since you have to re-engineer the landscape--to try to re-engineer a landscape that functions as well as you can make it.