Al Gore has been honored appropriately by the Los Angeles School District. They built a new school on top of a toxic dump and named it after the man who has come to symbolize environmental voodoo.
There are some classic comments in the L.A. Times report on the new school, the Carson-Gore Academy of Environmental Sciences, which is named after Rachel Carson and Gore, the world’s two leading purveyors of environmental nonsense:
“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.
Got that? The school is “probably” safe “at the moment.” Just imagine how excited the kids will be on their first day of school. And just imagine how excited the parents will be if the kids survive.
Source: Los Angeles Times
