Ojai Says County Stifled Report on Landfill Sites : Environment: Officials state that the study ranked Weldon Canyon fifth instead of first. Planners call it an internal memo.

Continuing their fight against a new landfill nearby, Ojai city officials on Tuesday accused Ventura County planners of suppressing a secret study that finds four other locations superior to the proposed Weldon Canyon dump.

A county environmental impact report last fall identified Weldon Canyon--north of Ventura near the mouth of the Ojai Valley--as the best site for a major new garbage dump in western Ventura County.

But Ojai officials said in interviews and a news release Tuesday that county planners knew better and purposely misled the public and some members of the County Board of Supervisors.

“They did a study that shows that Weldon Canyon is not the top-ranking site and suppressed it,” Ojai Councilwoman Nina Shelley said. “How can you go on making your case that Weldon Canyon is the superior environmental site, when you know it’s not?”

County Planning Director Keith Turner said his staff conducted a “quickie analysis” of 21 landfill sites in November and ranked four higher than Weldon Canyon. About the same time, the county released its environmental impact report that ranked Weldon Canyon first.

But it is untrue that he suppressed information, Turner said. In fact, he said he expects to summarize his staff’s new findings in a memo to the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors before hearings on Weldon Canyon this summer.

“There is a lot of information that anybody goes through in coming to conclusions and making decisions that is not published,” Turner said. “It was not intended to go out to the public.”

The Planning Department’s ranking of landfills was done only to see if the county was meeting its obligations under state law, which requires that a reasonable number and variety of alternatives to the Weldon site be analyzed, Turner said.

But Ojai officials said they want the Board of Supervisors to stop the progress of the Weldon Canyon proposal until the alternative locations that county planners have identified as best can be fully evaluated.

Shelley said she thinks that all four sites ranked ahead of Weldon in the new study would be better for the Ojai Valley. Three would result in far less air pollution for the valley and all four would be farther away from housing developments, she said.

Three of the four top-ranked sites are canyons east of California 33, not far from Weldon Canyon, and are accessible by Canada Larga Road. The fourth location is west of California 33, near Taylor Ranch.

“I am hoping that the supervisors will really take this matter seriously and insist that the alternatives be considered to a greater extent,” Shelley said. “I don’t see how they can make a decision without having a full knowledge of these better sites.”

The city of Ojai and two other Ojai Valley groups already have appealed to the board the findings of the county Environmental Report Review Committee, which concluded that the Weldon Canyon environmental report is legally adequate.

At that April 28 appeals hearing, Shelley said she will also cite the new county planners’ study as a reason to slow down the Weldon Canyon project review.

Supervisor Susan K. Lacey, in whose district Weldon Canyon is located, could not be reached for comment Tuesday. But her aide, Ed Webster, said: “We’ve been asking the staff to look at alternative sites, so this certainly raises our interest level.”

In a January letter to Scott Ellison, the planner who has overseen the Weldon Canyon environmental impact report, Lacey said the county should look at alternative landfill sites identified in a 1991 study by the Ventura Regional Sanitation District.

Many of the 35 sites the sanitation district studied last year were not evaluated in the 1985 county analysis that found Weldon Canyon to be the best landfill location in the west county, Lacey said.

“It does not appear prudent to discuss alternatives to Weldon while ignoring the many sites recently identified in the (sanitation district) study,” she said.

In response, Ellison quoted the state law, which requires that the county’s Weldon environmental impact report only “describe a reasonable range of alternatives to the project” and evaluate their merits.

Ellison said the county could never determine which site is the absolute best “because it is always possible to find a site . . . which has not been considered.” He said any study of more alternatives was unnecessary.

Ellison did not mention the Planning Department’s November study of some of the sites that Lacey wanted analyzed. He said Tuesday that he was unaware of the study done by his colleagues.

Planning Director Turner said he also does not think any further study of alternatives is necessary.

“Weldon in our estimation is the best site,” he said. “We don’t feel there are any real viable alternatives to Weldon.”

Turner said he came to that conclusion because Weldon was ranked first among 38 sites in a 1985 county study that considered 40 different cost and environmental factors.

His staff’s recent study analyzed 21 sites using just 34 of the 40 factors used in 1985, Turner said.

Because of cost and time considerations, planners did not rank landfills in six categories: the availability of dirt and rock to cover garbage, consistency with area plans, condition of access roads, severity of terrain, archeological sites and proximity of endangered species, wildlife and habitats.

“You end up comparing apples to oranges, so what do you achieve with this so-called ranking?” Turner said.

Despite the shortcomings of the planners’ new study, Councilwoman Shelley said she wants the complete study--not just a summary--included in the environmental impact report that will be sent to the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors this summer.

As it is, the environmental impact report states that Weldon Canyon is the best west county landfill site. But it also lists several irreversible consequences for the environment if the dump is built, such as loss of Chumash Indian artifacts, loss of native oaks and other trees, and increases in air pollution, toxic gas, noise and dust.

The environmental report was prepared by county staff members and consultants and was financed by Waste Management Inc., the company that wants to spend $30 million to build the 110-acre landfill.

The dump would serve 420,000 people in western Ventura County for at least 30 years. It would replace the Bailard Landfill near Oxnard, which the sanitation district must close in late 1993 unless its request for a three-year extension is approved.