Buyers Avoid Tract Built on Dump : Oxnard Dunes: Real estate brokers blame negative publicity generated by warning signs and a lawsuit over the oil wastes beneath the homes.

It’s a real estate broker’s nightmare, and it has happened twice to Buzz Enis.

In the past 60 days, Enis, co-owner of Enis & Enis Inc. in Oxnard, has come close to selling two properties in the Oxnard Dunes, a sunny, beachfront community at the northwest end of town. One property was a $700,000 single-family house; the other was a $350,000 condominium.

Enis lost both buyers. The reason: a white billboard depicting a skull and crossbones with the word “TOXIC” painted in huge black letters to publicize the fact that the neighborhood was built over an oil-waste dump.

In both cases, the prospective buyers saw the sign and suddenly developed cold feet, Enis said. “Our company has since chosen to stay completely away from those properties.”

Although a preliminary finding in June by the state Department of Health Services said the pollutants there are well below dangerous levels, real estate brokers in Oxnard said the negative publicity generated by warning signs and a lawsuit over the dump have dealt a deadly blow to the real estate market in the area.

Not one of the Dunes’ 54 homes has been sold or bought in the last two years, according to real estate listings. However, four vacant lots have been sold during that time.

And because of the suit and the signs, no lending institution will finance the purchase of property at the Dunes, said Tom Conway, a broker for Lamb Realty of Oxnard. Anyone interested in buying property at the Dunes must finance the sale through the landowner, he said.

According to city officials, no new construction has taken place in the Dunes for the past two years, primarily because of the difficulty in getting financing.

The billboard was built in June as part of a campaign by residents to publicize the oil-waste dump. Neighborhood activist Lynda Paxton has spray-painted the words “Oxnard’s Own Love Canal” on the side of her duplex in the 4900 block of Dunes Street. On an adjoining fence, she wrote: “Our Home Toxic Waste Dump.”

Paxton and other residents have been up in arms ever since a routine soil test by a Camarillo contractor in 1985 revealed that the 100-lot subdivision was developed on top of a dump for oil waste.

The land was used as a dump in the late 1950s and early ‘60s before it was sold and subdivided in the mid-1960s.

In 1986, 175 Dunes residents filed a $3.5-billion lawsuit against 120 defendants, including developers, real estate brokers, oil companies, previous landowners and landfill operators.

Joe Young, a broker for The Young Co. in Oxnard, said he has no qualms about telling prospective buyers about the oil-waste dump, as is required by the state Department of Real Estate. The problem is that most buyers don’t believe him when he says it is safe to live there.

“People go by the billboard, and they get scared, and you tell them it’s a lie, but they won’t believe you,” said Young, who added that he tries to convince buyers about the health effects by showing them newspaper clippings he has stapled to a wall in his office.

The oil-dump hoopla has even affected sales at Oxnard Shores, a neighborhood of high-priced luxury homes across the street from the Dunes subdivision. The Shores was not built over a dump.

One broker, who is named in the suit and requested anonymity, said that, in the last 30 days, he has come close to losing two prospective buyers of property in the Shores. “It has definitely had an effect on the Shores, but it’s hard to measure how much,” he said.

For Paxton, the complaints that her signs and the lawsuit have stopped sales and development in the area are good news.

“Trust me, that was the intent,” she said. “The intention was to wake somebody up to say that we have a serious problem.”

Paxton is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit and leader of a neighborhood organization that believes the Dunes present a health hazard and should be cleaned up.

She said that, until state health officials provide a final statement declaring the area completely safe for residents, she will continue to raise a stink about the oil dump.

“If they give us a 100% clean bill of health, then I will personally get on a scaffolding and take down my signs,” she said.

A final report on the Dunes is due in less than six months, said Richard Varenchik, a spokesman for the state Department of Health Services.

But for Councilwoman Dorothy Maron, that is not soon enough. During a City Council meeting Tuesday, Maron asked city staff members to lobby the state agency to issue the declaration as soon as possible “and settle the matter once and for all.”

City Atty. Gary Gillig said he would prepare a letter that each council member could sign.

During the same discussion, Mayor Nao Takasugi called Paxton’s signs “oversized graffiti” and asked city staff if anything can be done to get rid of them and the billboard.

In an interview, Community Development Director Richard Maggio said both the billboard and the signs on Paxton’s duplex violate city codes in one way or another. “However, it will take a while to go through all the legal procedures” to remove the billboard and the signs, he said.

Paxton, who has moved out of her house at the Dunes, said she is not concerned about the city’s efforts to eliminate her signs.

“I am more concerned about people’s health, and any way I can discourage someone from living over here I will do it,” she said.