LA school named after ALGORE is a hazmat site

ALGORE and Rachel Carson. A school named after two of the greatest con artists in history....and it's a hazmat site. This is delicious!

Los Angeles school named after Al Gore - latimes.com

He's the first vice president to have an L.A. school named after him, sharing the honor with author Rachel Carson. Fittingly, the campus will be devoted to environmental themes. But there's a catch.

...And, fittingly, the school will be devoted to environmental themes.

... Critics say the campus' location poses a long-term health risk to students and staff.

...The $75.5-million Carson-Gore Academy of Environmental Sciences will open Sept. 13 for about 675 students. As he was with Bill Clinton (who has an L.A. middle school named after him), Gore is second on the ticket to Rachel Carson, the late author credited with helping launch the modern environmental movement.

"Renaming this terribly contaminated school after famous environmental advocates is an affront to the great work that these individuals have done to protect the public's health from harm," an environmental coalition wrote in a letter to the Los Angeles Unified School District. Making sure the school is safe "would be an even better way to honor their contribution to society."

Construction crews were working at the campus up to the Labor Day weekend, replacing toxic soil with clean fill. All told, workers removed dirt from two 3,800-square-foot plots to a depth of 45 feet, space enough to hold a four-story building. The soil had contained more than a dozen underground storage tanks serving light industrial businesses.

Additional contamination may have come from the underground tanks of an adjacent gas station. A barrier will stretch 45 feet down from ground level to limit future possible fuel leakage.

An oil well operates across the street, but officials said they've found no associated risks. Like many local campuses, this school also sits above an oil field, but no oil field-related methane has been detected.

Groundwater about 45 feet below the surface remains contaminated but also poses no risk, officials said.

Because the district imported clean dirt, the school is probably safe at the moment, said Jane Williams, executive director of the Kern County-based California Communities Against Toxics. But she and other critics, including Robina Suwol, who heads the locally based California Safe Schools coalition, worry that the pollution sources have not been adequately identified and that the dirty groundwater could recontaminate the soil.