County Agency Will Monitor Medical Waste : Health: The environmental division is to ensure that the tons of material from small facilities are sterilized before disposal.

Ventura County environmental health officials were given responsibility Tuesday for regulating the disposal of tons of medical waste generated by the county’s 1,500 small medical facilities.

The Board of Supervisors gave initial approval for the county’s environmental health division to hire a full-time employee to ensure that the 2.5 million pounds of medical waste thrown away each year in the county are first sterilized.

The supervisors also asked county staff to draft an ordinance to establish fees for the medical community to raise the estimated $100,000 needed to run the enforcement program.

County officials estimate that the annual fees would range from $25 to $1,400 depending on the amount and type of waste that is generated.

The Board of Supervisors will give final approval of the ordinance next month, officials said. The ordinance would apply to medical waste generated by small facilities such as clinics and dental offices.

A new state law that requires all medical facilities, no matter how small, to treat hazardous waste before throwing it away also gives counties the option of enforcing the law or turning the responsibility over to the state.

The county’s enforcement “provides the highest level of protection even though the board abhors a new fee,” Chief Administrator Richard Wittenberg said.

The only protest Tuesday came from Michael Kelley, an Oxnard veterinarian, who told the Board of Supervisors that the state can enforce the law just as well as the county.

He said allowing the county to enforce the law would only add a layer of bureaucracy to local government.

However, Donald Koepp, the county’s environmental health director, said the Ventura County Medical Assn., the Ventura County Dental Society and the Hospital Council of Southern California have supported county enforcement of the law.

Only the Ventura County Veterinarian Assn. and the Podiatric Society requested that the state enforce the new law, he said.

State law previously required only businesses that generate more than 200 pounds of medical waste per month, such as hospitals, to treat medical waste before throwing it away.

County environmental health officials have regulated these large facilities since the 1960s, Koepp said.

The new law, which took effect April 1, requires the same medical waste treatment in all medical businesses, no matter how small. These include dental offices, clinics, convalescent homes, acupuncture offices, pet shops and mortuaries.

“Just about anyone who generates medical waste is regulated under this law,” Koepp said.

A survey by the county in December concluded that more than a third of Ventura County’s medical facilities did not treat medical waste before throwing it away. Some facilities said they store the waste without plans to treat it or dispose of it, according to the survey.

Since 1987, there have been 23 incidents involving illegally disposed medical waste that required emergency response by police and fire officials, according to authorities. Illegally throwing away untreated medical waste is a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 and one year in jail.

Koepp said untreated medical waste is dangerous because it may contain infectious bacteria and sharp objects such as hypodermic needles and scalpels.

Although there are no companies in Ventura County that treat medical waste, many large medical facilities and some smaller businesses own an autoclave, a device that sterilizes medical waste by exposing it to heat, county officials said.