Neighbors Criticize Report on Planned Weldon Landfill : Hearing: Opponents say the document fails to outline the environmental damage the $50-million dump could cause.

Neighbors of Weldon Canyon on Tuesday criticized an environmental impact report on plans to build a landfill there, but many said they do not want a landfill built in nearby Hammond Canyon either.

While the EIR was praised by Weldon Canyon co-owner Kim Bonsall and an attorney for would-be operator Waste Management Inc., it was trashed by some Ojai Valley and north Ventura Avenue residents.

Neighbors of the site--situated midway between Ojai and Ventura--testified at a public hearing that the report failed to outline the damage that the $50-million landfill could do to their region’s air, wildlife and property values.

“My health and the monetary value of my house is in jeopardy,” said Robert Friis, a resident of the Valley Vista subdivision, which is within two miles of Weldon Canyon.

Friis said the EIR lacks that information, and added, “They’ve candy-coated all the issues and led us to believe we should welcome this project with open arms.”

Valley Vista resident Laura Schwab said, “We watch the owls come out at dusk, we watch the rabbits and squirrels run freely while we are out on our walks. . . . The EIR doesn’t say anything about what will happen to them. . . . The pollution will be horrible, the noise from the trucks and the trash (operations) will make our neighborhood a dump itself.”

Friis and Schwab were two of 28 people to speak at the public hearing before the Board of Supervisors, which convened as the Environmental Report Review Committee to hear criticism of the third draft of the EIR.

The document must be approved before supervisors can decide whether to make Weldon Canyon the replacement for Bailard Landfill, scheduled to close Dec. 7.

The third draft of the EIR seeks to answer the supervisors’ questions on alternatives to a Weldon Canyon landfill, such as dumping trash into one of four nearby canyons or hauling it to Riverside County or East Carbon, Utah. County planners rejected the four canyons as “fatally flawed” because their owners have no desire to see their land used as private landfills.

Ojai special counsel Benjamin Kaufman said, “The EIR would find Weldon fatally flawed (for other reasons) if it were listed as an alternative to some other project.”

Other Ojai Valley officials and residents criticized the EIR for not fully considering a west county landfill in nearby Hammond Canyon, which they said would generate less air pollution in Ojai than a landfill in Weldon.

Engineers hired by the Ojai Valley Assn. for Clean Air found that the Hammond Canyon plan would have less impact than the Weldon plan on residents of the nearby Valley Vista subdivision, northern Ventura Avenue, Casitas Springs, Oak View and Ojai Valley, said Carl Huntsinger, the association’s head.

Hammond Canyon is situated farther from residences than Weldon and has an air-flow pattern that would carry most pollution from the site out over the Oxnard Plain rather than into the Ojai Valley, he said.

Others, however, criticized the Hammond proposal, saying it would bring as much pollution as a Weldon Canyon landfill to the Ojai Valley--or worse.

The road from California 33 to Hammond Canyon is long, narrow and prone to flooding, said John Long, a resident of Sulfur Mountain Road near Hammond.

“More pollution will be created by Hammond than by Weldon,” added Long, who then showed a videotape of himself releasing balloons in Hammond Canyon that then drift into the Ojai Valley.

The landfill also would destroy 15 acres of wetlands, he said.

But Ojai City Councilwoman Nina Shelley urged the supervisors to consider Hammond Canyon as a cleaner alternative than Weldon, adding, “This EIR clearly indicates that this project must be turned down. There are better alternatives. . . . Enough time and money have been spent on this project.”

Shelley also criticized the report as being biased. “It seems when these drafts of the EIR make assumptions, they do so in such a way as to make it appear that Weldon Canyon is the best site,” she said.

Afterward, county planner Scott Ellison, who has been overseeing the EIR, replied that his staff’s predictions on the landfill’s effects on air and wildlife lean toward the side of environmental caution.

“The staff has worked very hard from the first draft to collect as comprehensive data as we possibly could, and when we couldn’t collect comprehensive data to make an analysis, we had to make assumptions,” he said. “And whenever we had to make assumptions, we made worst-case assumptions.”

The same worst-case assumptions were applied to a brief analysis of Hammond Canyon included in the EIR, Ellison said.

“We are hearing the same type of criticism” that has been heard in the two years since the EIR process began, Ellison said.

Waste Management attorney Mitchel Kahn said Weldon opponents were wrongly using the EIR review process to try to defeat the entire project. “The engineering studies should not be used as a weapon to delay a decision on denying or accepting the application” by Waste Management for a landfill permit, Kahn said.

And Kim Bonsall said, “I feel the planning staff has done what the Board of Supervisors required. I feel the EIR report is one of the most extensive EIR reports ever done in the county.”

County planners will respond to all the comments in a report to the supervisors who, as the review committee, plan to vote on the report March 23.

NEXT STEP

The Board of Supervisors, acting as the Environmental Report Review Committee, plans to reconvene March 23 to decide whether to recommend that the EIR be certified or rejected by the county Planning Commission. The supervisors hope to bring the entire Weldon Canyon project to a vote in May.