Catch-22 for Worm Concern : County Says Recycling Business Must Close

Ventura County’s worm king saw a need and he filled it, expanding last spring to a 16-acre plot in the shadow of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

Cities had grass clippings and tree trimmings that they didn’t want to haul to a landfill anymore. And Richard Morhar had millions of worms who would eat tons of the stuff every day.

But now the bureaucrats are shutting Morhar down, closing The Worm Concern on Tierra Rejada Road in three weeks--not because they want to, but because they think the law gives them no choice.

“The bureaucrats are sympathetic, but the law doesn’t give us the right to be sympathetic,” said Terry Gilday, a county environmental health supervisor. “We’re kind of in a Catch-22 situation. The law promotes this kind of recycling operation, but at the same time, it places stringent requirements on it.”

Morhar, 46, a former accountant who opened The Worm Concern in his Thousand Oaks back yard 15 years ago, expanded his business in May to an open field half a mile down a steep hill from the new Reagan library near Simi Valley.

Since then, he has taken in 4,800 tons of clippings, cuttings and weeds--which he grinds into a powdery food that his worms turn into a high-nutrient plant fertilizer that is sold at a premium price in stores.

It’s a process county officials have promoted at public ecology and recycling fairs.

“I think everyone is supportive of composting, whatever the form--whether it’s Richard’s operation or back-yard composting,” said Jeff Bowling, an analyst in the county solid waste management department.

In five months, the cities of Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley and Moorpark alone have sent 3,660 tons of yard waste to Morhar. That earns them credits under a state law that requires cities to recycle 25% of their rubbish by 1995 and 50% by the year 2000.

But an attorney for the California Integrated Waste Management Board ruled in September that Morhar’s operation constitutes a “composting facility.” Despite its small size and use of earthworms, Morhar’s business must have the same permits as giant composting plants run by public agencies or landfill operators, the state ruled.

So two weeks ago, the county notified Morhar that he must shut down and clear his property within 30 days. Morhar cannot reopen until he completes an environmental study and gains the permission of six state and local agencies.

Morhar said that would cost him $200,000--an astronomical amount for a business that operates on a shoestring. County officials say his estimates are about right.

“We’re recycling, so you would think they would do everything possible to keep us in business,” Morhar said. “The cities like us. County solid waste likes us. Our operation is benign to the environment. We’re not hurting anything.”

Not everybody agrees.

At least one neighbor and several passersby have complained to county officials about stacks of waste wood--some 10 feet high--that clutter Morhar’s property, county officials said.

The county Fire Department also notified Gilday that the wood is a potential fire hazard.

And about two weeks ago, a woman who said she represented the Reagan presidential library called the county solid waste department to complain about the unsightliness of Morhar’s property.

The woman did not give her name nor did she follow up with calls to Gilday or to County Supervisor Vicky Howard, they said. And Charles Jelloian, operations director for the library’s foundation, said he had heard no complaints about The Worm Concern.

“Maybe someone is using the Reagan name out there,” Jelloian said. “I am not aware of any problem at all. Someone told me kind of where it is, but I hadn’t noticed it.”

Morhar said, however, that he received Gilday’s Oct. 21 notice to shut down soon after the woman called the county to complain.

“I’m pretty sure (the county) was going to act anyway,” Morhar said. “It just gave them a little bit more ammunition. I don’t know how we could be offensive to the library. What can they see from up there?”

From the westernmost rooms of the Reagan library, Morhar’s mounds of scrap wood can be seen. But they do not stand out.

Morhar said he agrees that the stacks of waste wood are ugly. He said he is getting rid of them and stopped accepting the material weeks ago.

Morhar--an expert on earthworms’ eating and breeding habits and their favorite foods--said he agrees with county officials who say his business should conform with county fire codes and rules against visual blight.

But the standards imposed by the state are something else, he said.

Morhar insists that The Worm Concern is a livestock business. The state solid waste management board says Morhar is involved in composting.

“The real villain in all of this is a tremendously overbroad definition of composting in the statute,” said Morhar’s lawyer, Jonathan Chodos. “It sweeps into the waste management board’s control every livestock operation in the state.

“Even though our livestock are tiny and squirmy,” Chodos said, “we feed them, raise them and they multiply. We sell them just as steers are sold, and we sell their manure, just as the manure of other livestock is sold.”

According to Chodos, the state solid waste board would have no jurisdiction over Morhar’s worms if they were not eating clippings and limbs diverted from landfills.

“If we fed them hay,” he said, “there’s no question the waste management board would have no control over us.”

The lawyer said state officials have assured him that they would reconsider Morhar’s case later this month, though they would not necessarily change their position.

State waste management board officials did not return Times phone calls last week.

Kay Martin, county solid waste director, said she also hopes to intervene on behalf of The Worn Concern. Martin said she will ask the County Waste Commission to raise the issue with the state.

The 12,000 to 15,000 tons of “greenwaste” Morhar can divert from the county’s 750,000 tons of waste each year “is significant and certainly something we would hope we can continue doing,” Martin said.

Gilday, who sent out the closure letter to Morhar, said he also supports The Worm Concern.

“I’m not sure the law intended a facility of this sort to be regulated this way,” Gilday said. “There’s probably a need for some sort of permitting process, but the state law only provides a very large sledgehammer. . . . I feel we need something more moderate.”