Countywide : 1,500 Turn Out to Drop Off Toxics

A record 1,543 cars lined up last weekend as Ventura County residents waited as much as an hour to drop off old cans of paint, pesticides and other household hazardous wastes, officials said Monday.

Residents from Simi Valley to Ojai drove to the Camarillo collection site Saturday to drop off a total of more than 125,000 pounds of hazardous wastes, which were trucked off Monday to be recycled, burned or buried, Ventura Regional Sanitation District officials said.

“We do this as a public service program to keep toxics out of the landfills,” said Kelly White, environmental manager for the district. “This gives people an alternative to throwing hazardous materials in their trash.”

But White acknowledged that the wait was unusually long, due in part to the poor accessibility of Camarillo’s maintenance yard at the end of Glenn Drive and the rarity of collection days.

“We would like to have more of them, one in every community every year,” she said. “But they are so expensive that we can’t afford it.”

Each hazardous-waste collection day, which is free of charge to the public, costs the district about $130,000, depending on the volume and type of materials dropped off, she said. The last collection day in Camarillo took place two years ago.

The next collection day is now scheduled for September in Ventura.

Over the past three years, the district has scheduled collection days twice a year in cities throughout the county, White said. The district had planned to hold two more collection days in the next several months, with the hosting cities picking up half the expense.

But the district’s board decided earlier this year to foot the entire bill for the collection days, so that smaller cities such as Fillmore and Ojai that couldn’t afford the cost can have collections every few years, White said.