L.A. Names School After Al Gore -- But Will Students Be Safe?

Los Angeles Times ^ | September 6, 2010 | Howard Blume

[lbryce]

L.A. school officials have named a school after Al Gore, making him the first vice president to receive such an honor.

Yet there are concerns over the school -- not over Al Gore's name but because some critics fear the campus' location poses a long-term health risk to students and staff.

School district officials insist that the Arlington Heights property is clean and safe. And they've pledged to check vapor monitors and groundwater wells to make sure.

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.

[KosmicKitty]

There is something very wrong about using the word Science and Al Gore in the same phrase.

Even more so to use Rachel Carson's name in association with any science. She wasn't a scientist, she was a manipulator of emotions who has caused the deaths of more people than Hitler, Mao, Stalin & Pol Pot combined.

Malaria, bed bugs, West Nile, blame it on Rachel

[Verginius Rufus]

It isn't a good idea to name things after people who are still alive, although the US did it in naming the national capital for George Washington while he was still living, and various towns and counties were named for Revolutionary War heroes while they were still alive.

Cincinnati named a street after Pete Rose and Louisville one after Muhammad Ali.

The Soviets waited until Lenin was dead before renaming St. Petersburg/Petrograd "Leningrad," but there was a Stalingrad while Stalin was dictator and there was a Titograd in Montenegro while Tito was in charge in Yugoslavia. The dictator of the Dominican Republic renamed the country's capital after himself, Ciudad Trujillo.

A better name for the school might be Slumlord Millionire School, in honor of Al Gore's record as a landlord.