Signs Protesting Oil-Waste Dump Go Up : Environment: Greenpeace activists join Oxnard residents in defying city warnings against erecting the billboards.

Defying earlier warnings from Oxnard city officials, Greenpeace activists Saturday helped a team of Oxnard Dunes residents hoist skull-and-crossbones banners over the neighborhood and erected a pair of protest signs, including one labeling the area a “Toxic Time Bomb.”

Those actions came despite reassurances in a California Department of Health Services report Nov. 27 that an oil-waste dump buried beneath the neighborhood poses no health risk. They also came despite zoning violation proceedings against protester Lynda Paxton over similar signs on her property.

“There may not be any immediate threat, but define ‘immediate’ for me, OK?” said Lew Dunn, one of two Greenpeace staff members at the protest. The state Department of Health Services, Dunn said, “has absolutely no credibility” in neighborhoods facing toxicity problems.

He added that Greenpeace, an environmental advocacy group, “will be supporting these people until it’s solved.”

Discovery of the oil-waste dump prompted 175 residents and former residents of the 100-parcel subdivision to join in a 1986 lawsuit against 120 defendants, including developers, real estate agents, oil companies, previous landowners and landfill operations. The suit is unresolved.

Paul Dolan, spokesman for the plaintiffs in that suit, was among Saturday’s protesters and spent much of his time grappling with wood panels on the roof of Steven Blanchard’s house at 1010 Canal St.

With Blanchard’s cooperation, Dolan and other volunteers were restoring a billboard-sized wooden sign proclaiming the neighborhood “toxic.” Blanchard first put up the sign months ago, but in late October Oxnard Shores Community Assn. officials had it sawed down, citing association bylaws.

Since then, Oxnard City Attorney Gary Gillig has warned that if Blanchard rebuilds the sign without a building permit, he would ask the City Council to seek civil prosecution.

In addition, Paxton has been charged with three counts of violating zoning ordinances with her own house’s brightly colored protest messages, which include the phrase “Our Own Love Canal.” Paxton has pleaded not guilty and faces a Jan. 7 preliminary hearing.

Neither Gillig nor other city officials were evident at Saturday’s protest, and Oxnard Police Sgt. Frank Devorik reported that “we didn’t get any calls, and we didn’t have any plans for it.”

The day’s only confrontation came when one neighbor, who declined to give his name, approached the sign raisers and said “Hold it! You people have no right doing this. I live here. . . . Just do it through a lawyer.” The protesters noted their lawsuit and their fight with the city, and the man eventually left, saying Oxnard’s City Council “needs to be punished.”

The second sign to rise Saturday, a roughly 15-by-20-foot billboard painted in orange and black, read “The Dunes, a Toxic Time Bomb.” It went up on the second story of a Dunes Court triplex owned in part by Joe Murphy.

Murphy said the building’s other owners had agreed to post the sign and that it would probably remain up “for the duration--unless we want to go with some different colors in the spring.”

Other protesters and Greenpeace officials stressed, however, that they viewed the signs as temporary and thus not subject to city restrictions governing permanent signs. As for the homeowners association’s restrictions on such issues, Dunn said, they should be tested in court against First Amendment freedom-of-speech guarantees.