2 Supervisors Propose Sending Trash to Utah

As debate intensifies over where to put a new Ventura County landfill, two Ventura County supervisors on Tuesday proposed shipping local waste to a dump in Utah.

The waste-by-rail proposal, announced by Supervisors John K. Flynn and Maggie Erickson Kildee, was touted as one way the county could avoid a crisis should Bailard Landfill near Oxnard close before a long-term replacement is approved.

The landfill is scheduled to close in late 1993 and its proposed replacement at Weldon Canyon, between Ventura and Ojai, has drawn strenuous protests from environmentalists, the city of Ojai and several Ojai Valley groups.

“We cannot rely on this plan as a long-term solution for waste disposal in Ventura County,” Erickson Kildee said. “But it will give us the ability to be flexible, as well as some time to determine where to put the replacement landfill.”

Flynn and Erickson Kildee both said the waste shipments would strictly be a fallback option in case supervisors reject the Weldon Canyon project after hearings this summer and Bailard Landfill closes on schedule next year.

A second contingency plan is a major expansion of Toland Road Landfill, east of Santa Paula. The Ventura Regional Sanitation District has proposed a tenfold expansion, but local residents have opposed it.

Erickson Kildee represents the communities that surround Toland Road Landfill.

In discussing the plan, Ventura County joins a growing list of Southern California cities and counties considering rail links to out-of-state landfills as a solution to the growing waste disposal dilemma.

“This is an option that we must take advantage of,” Flynn said as he described the proposal to fellow board members. “It could be incorporated into any of the ideas currently under discussion.”

Waste would be shipped along one of two Southern Pacific railroad corridors, crossing Northern California and parts of Nevada and Utah on its way to a massive landfill still under construction in East Carbon City, Utah, about 130 miles southeast of Salt Lake City.

At about $40 per ton including shipping costs, dumping Ventura County’s garbage in Utah would be about $5 per ton cheaper than using Bailard Landfill, Flynn said.

During interviews Tuesday, representatives of the firm that will run the massive landfill were surprised to hear that Flynn and Erickson Kildee had discussed the project in such detail.

“We didn’t really talk about fees,” said East Carbon Development Corp. western regional manager David Gavrich. “We just gave them more of an informational proposal,” Gavrich said.

Later, Gavrich estimated that the cost of dumping would be closer to $50 per ton, but said that should not discourage Ventura County from using the facility.

“What we have here is a brand-new rail-haul landfill designed for out-of-state waste that can offer you a 20-year contract. That has to have a lot of interest for a community that wants to finally put this whole issue to rest,” Gavrich said.

Although Flynn and Erickson Kildee said the waste-by-rail system could be on-line before the end of the year, other Ventura County officials said the proposal is far from certain.

“The landfill in Utah might be ready to go, but whether or not we’re going to be ready is still an open question,” said Kay Martin, director of the county’s Solid Waste Management Department.

A countywide recycling and sorting center would have to be built before the rail-haul system could go into effect, Martin said. Trains carrying residual, or non-recyclable, waste would be loaded at and depart from the center, she said.

The Ventura County Waste Commission, a trash management group with representatives from cities and the county, has been considering possible sites for the transfer center for six months, and locations in Camarillo and Oxnard are still under consideration, Martin said.

Last year, Supervisor Maria VanderKolk proposed hauling waste from western Ventura County by rail to a site near Piru. But that waste-by-rail proposal was shot down by Erickson Kildee, among others, who argued that it violated a policy to locate dumps in the sections of the county that produce the waste.

Flynn and Erickson said shipping the trash to Utah does not create an unfair garbage burden on any particular community.

Yet, Flynn said, “It’s a long way to traffic waste.”