SANTA PAULA, FILLMORE : Increased Landfill Capacity Is Sought

The county’s regional waste district will seek permission to double the trash capacity at the Toland Road Landfill between Santa Paula and Fillmore, board directors decided Thursday.

Ventura Regional Sanitation District directors also decided to abandon the search for a site to build a publicly owned and operated landfill, a decision that followed by two months the completion of a $160,000 study that evaluated 35 potential landfill sites.

An expanded Toland Road Landfill could collect trash from the western county for 10 to 12 years in case a proposal to build a new landfill at Weldon Canyon north of Ventura is rejected or delayed, district officials said.

The expansion would also buy the county time if an application to extend the life of the Bailard Landfill in Oxnard--scheduled to close at the end of 1993--is not approved.

The decision to approve the two-pronged motion came over the objections of Fillmore and Ojai representatives.

Director Nina Shelley, an Ojai city councilwoman, told board members they should not leave the western county with only Weldon Canyon as an option for a new landfill. Instead, Shelley said, the board should not only enlarge Toland Road, but study neighboring O’Leary Canyon as a site for a major landfill to serve the western county.

“We need more options,” she said. “We’ve made that mistake before of having only one site to consider.”

Roger Campbell, a Fillmore city councilman, objected to the move for different reasons.

“We don’t need a larger dump,” he said.

In any case, sanitation district officials said Toland Road must be expanded to become more cost-efficient. At its present limit of 135 tons a day, the landfill does not collect enough revenue to pay its expenses, and it does not have enough revenue set aside to pay the expenses to close the landfill, said Clinton L. Whitney, district general manager.

“We can’t close it and we can’t keep it open because it doesn’t pay for itself,” he said.