Dump Owners Sued Over Maintenance

The Ventura Regional Sanitation District on Wednesday sued the owners of the embattled Bailard landfill, alleging that they have refused to pay for an $8-million trust fund to maintain the dump after it closes.

California law requires the owners to maintain the 223-acre dump near Oxnard after its scheduled closing in 1994, according to the lawsuit filed in Ventura Superior Court.

The owners are responsible for establishing an $8-million trust fund to pay for removing methane gas from the decaying garbage, ensuring the purity of ground water leaching out of the landfill and keeping the dump environmentally safe, said David R. Worley, attorney for the sanitation district.

Worley said the district wrote to the owners last week, asking them to “state their position” on the closure costs they earlier agreed to pay. When no one wrote back, attorneys for the district called the owners’ attorneys, who said they “do not believe they have to pay for post-closure maintenance,” Worley said.

The Oakland-based attorneys representing the dump’s more than two dozen owners could not be reached for comment.

The Bailard landfill opened in 1961 on unincorporated land bordered by the Santa Clara River, Victoria Avenue and Gonzales Road.

The Ventura County Environmental Resources Agency ordered the landfill closed in 1975 because of environmental violations, but the dump reopened because the county agreed to take over the site in 1979.

The sanitation district reopened the landfill in February, 1989, after paying $2 million to clean it up and agreeing to pay another $11 million to make it into a park after it closes--but only on the condition that the owners pay to maintain the dump after it closes, the suit said.