A Heap of Trash Trouble : Sanitation: Bailard Landfill’s scheduled closure forces officials to cooperate on waste reduction and disposal. But battles persist.

Packed full, a pale green Harrison Bros. truck rumbles over the Santa Clara River, cuts between the celery fields and hisses to a stop atop Ventura County’s largest landfill.

The truck dumps. Tons of trash spill onto the massive hill, where heavy machines crush the refuse into a modern, honeycombed pattern of waste “cells” surrounded with dirt, capping an older, messier pile that grew years deep before environmental laws demanded cleaner waste-disposal procedures.

This is Bailard Landfill.

Due to close next winter amid legal battles over its future, Bailard has become both a symptom and a symbol of Ventura County’s complex, expensive and increasingly politicized struggle with trash.

Bailard’s looming demise is but one of the impending events squeezing Ventura County’s governments onto a narrow battleground where, officials acknowledge, they must work together or face severe legal and financial damage by their failure to act.

* By Dec. 7, Bailard must close. The Ventura Regional Sanitation District, which runs it, is seeking permission to stretch that deadline to May, 1997. Failing that, west county cities will have to find the money to send their trash to far-flung landfills in Simi Valley, Los Angeles County or as far away as Utah.

* By May, the Board of Supervisors plans to vote on whether Weldon Canyon should replace Bailard Landfill. Yet nearly 18 years after the idea was aired, Weldon remains mired in a review of its environmental impact report. Meanwhile, some officials are pushing a controversial proposal to use greener Hammond Canyon nearby instead.

* By 1995, under Assembly Bill 939, all California cities and counties must cut their landfill use 25%. By the year 2000, they must cut it 50%. Yet most cities today recycle less than 15% of their trash. They will face fines of up to $10,000 a day if the goals are not met.

* To meet the state goals, officials agree, the county must have at least one materials recycling facility (MRF) running by 1995. Yet the county Waste Commission and the city of Oxnard have launched competing plans for such facilities in western Ventura County, leading to what trash planners cynically refer to as “dueling MRFs.”

Chaos? Not quite, officials say.

Countywide, trash officials admit that petty political bickering between cities and agencies over the years has eroded any sense of unity and derailed improvements of the trash system, bringing Ventura County to its current situation.

“There’s one thing we haven’t done in 17 years--we just don’t make decisions,” said Steve Chase, environmental coordinator for the city of Ventura. “As a group of people, countywide . . . it’s like boys in a sandbox, it really is. They’re throwing sand in each other’s eyes.”

City and county officials say that if they have balked at working together, it is because they fear losing control over trash programs and having to pay for landfill problems caused by someone else.

“The two factors that always cause this kind of stuff are politics and money. It’s as simple as that,” said Clint Whitney, general manager of the Ventura Regional Sanitation District.

“Somebody wants to be in charge of the power and somebody wants to be in charge of the money,” he said. “We now have proposals on the table that would solve this problem, but we’ve got cities and counties acting in very parochial ways in their own interest.”

Countywide Authority

City and county officials swallowed some of their differences last month and took a major step toward ending the stalemate.

On Jan. 28, officials from the county and all 10 cities agreed to draft legislation to establish a countywide Waste Management Authority, and state Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) has offered to usher it through the Legislature.

The authority would absorb VRSD’s landfills and liabilities and act as a countywide public utility, regulating trash collection rates and administering contracts with trash haulers and landfills--duties now performed by city and county governments.

Even this move has caused friction. Oxnard officials have made the unpopular proposal that their city have a doubly weighted vote on the new authority’s governing board because it produces the lion’s share of the trash and spends the most in dumping fees at the county’s landfills.

“Becoming regional is not easy. We give up power if we become regional,” said Supervisor Maggie Kildee, who chairs the county Waste Commission. “The cities think the county shouldn’t tell them what to do. We all have to give something up, for the good of the county.”

The problem of trash’s future in Ventura County is deceptively simple. The solution is complicated, officials say.

“The bottom line is there’s no getting rid of some materials that have to be disposed of,” said Thomas Berg, director of the county Resource Management Agency.

“Some people believe the Trash Fairy will come and make it go away,” said Berg, who oversees planning, building, environmental and land management functions for the county. “The reality is that with 670,000 of us in the county, we end up with a very large amount of solid waste material that needs to be disposed of.”

Without sacrifice, without all the cities agreeing to commit their money and their trash flow to commonly agreed-upon sites, trash will only grow more costly and complex, Kildee said.

Most of the 500,000 tons of trash thrown away each year by western Ventura County residents goes to Bailard.

In recent years, concerns about the 32-year-old landfill’s capacity and future have been nearly overshadowing its success.

The landfill’s owners signed a 1979 agreement giving VRSD use of the land for $1 a year, in exchange for the district’s agreement to clean up what was at that time an open dump left after their operation of it was shut down for environmental violations.

VRSD capped the dump with earth, then installed plumbing to carry off the byproducts of decomposition. Gas is now piped to a power plant across the road, and chemical leakage is drained off for treatment. The landfill reopened in 1989.

In 1988, the Legislature passed the Eastin Act, requiring landfills to be backed by trust funds covering maintenance for 30 years after they close--double the years required previously.

The owners refused VRSD’s demand to pay the anticipated $15.2-million post-closure bill, only $8 million of which has been raised by the district so far.

The district then pushed for Wright’s sponsorship of an amendment to the act that, when later passed, said that either the owner or operator could be held liable for paying post-closure costs.

Liability Dispute

In 1990, the district sued the owners, seeking to make them pay the post-closure liability. The owners countersued, claiming that VRSD has failed to control household hazardous wastes coming into Bailard.

“Post-closure, they thought they were getting an essentially clean site back which could be given over to public recreation use,” said Michael Cooney, the owners’ attorney. “It would be basically a turnkey operation. There was no amount, no suggestion of an amount” to be spent after closure.

John Conaway, VRSD’s director of solid waste, replied, “The realities are that they didn’t anticipate the responsibility of post-closure to be what it was.”

The case is scheduled to go to trial early next month.

Meanwhile, the county must find a place for the west county cities to dump their trash.

With Bailard facing possible closure in December, there are no cheap, short-term alternatives.

Sending more trash to Chiquito Canyon near Santa Clarita or the Calabasas Landfill could require cities to charge ratepayers more to cover the increased cost of trucking, officials say.

Toland Road Landfill, a VRSD-operated landfill between Santa Paula and Fillmore, is permitted to handle only 135 tons per day. Although that could be boosted to 500 tons in a pinch, it is too little to handle the 1,400 tons going to Bailard daily, and politically unpopular too, said VRSD’s Clint Whitney.

“We’ve met with Santa Paula and Fillmore,” Whitney said. “But because of the politics of the reorganization, they’re fearful that the camel will get its nose under the tent, and before you know it Toland Road will become the landfill for the western wasteshed.

“There is no intent for that,” Whitney added. “It is physically impossible.”

County planners also are weighing the possibility of shipping Ventura County’s trash by rail to landfills in Riverside County or East Carbon, Utah.

While the VRSD board voted Thursday to seek permission from the county and the state to keep Bailard open until 1997, the process will take six or seven months, district officials said.

If Bailard must close on time, the county Waste Commission will decide where the trash should go. It has hired CalRecovery Inc. of Hercules, Calif., to develop a contingency plan studying the cost of each alternative. The plan is due in March, said Kay Martin, director of the county Solid Waste Management Department.

“If people are forced to haul to direct-haul sites after December (such as Chiquito Canyon and Calabasas) the pressure would be higher to finally site the MRF facilities,” Martin said of the competing plans.

Yet although Waste Commission officials are working toward a compromise with Oxnard officials, the two agencies’ MRF projects are moving forward separately.

Siting Controversy

Over the past 18 years, study after study has named Weldon Canyon, on private land midway between Ojai and Ventura, as the most likely site for a new county landfill.

Owner Shull Bonsall wants the landfill built on his land.

Waste Management Inc. wants to spend $50 million to build it there and operate it for the county.

County planners want to see it built.

And county and city officials acknowledge that a new landfill must be built somewhere soon.

But the city of Ojai, environmental groups and neighbors of Weldon Canyon in the southwestern Ojai Valley and northwestern Ventura vehemently oppose the Weldon plan, expressing fears that truck traffic and rotting garbage will foul the air and devalue property there.

“It’s too close to people. Human health is too much involved,” said Ruth Shimer, member of the Los Padres chapter of the Sierra Club and the Environmental Coalition of Ventura County.

“We just feel we produce 7% of the trash, and with Weldon, we’d get 100% of the pollution,” said Leone Webster, member of the Ojai Valley Assn. for Clean Air. “It would destroy our community. People will not want to live in the most polluted part of Ventura County.”

Webster added, “It’s just not fair.”

However, air quality in the Ojai Valley has been improving steadily in recent years, said Berg, whose Resource Management Agency oversees county air pollution control.

“If Weldon were to be permitted and if the air quality management plan were correct, the air will be cleaner in 10 years with the Weldon Canyon Landfill than it is now,” Berg said.

Then there is the question of whether the landfill should be publicly or privately owned and run.

Critics including VRSD’s Clint Whitney have accused Waste Management of building a 35% profit margin into a draft of its proposed Weldon Canyon agreement with the county, which is still under negotiation.

“Waste Management Inc.’s out there trying to rip off the county,” Whitney said. “That’s the public’s money. Why does it have to go into their coffers? That agreement is ludicrous on its face.”

Whitney also said the company could open the landfill and walk out a few years later, leaving the county with untold liability for operating, closing and then maintaining it for years to come.

He also worried that with a near-monopoly on landfills in the county, Waste Management would let dumping fees creep up, and home pickup rates with them.

Less Profit

None of this is true, said county and Waste Management officials.

County trash official Craig Phillips said the 35% figure--after the costs of preparing the site, buying the landfill equipment, and paying property taxes, the post-closure fund and liability insurance--boils down to only a 10% profit for Waste Management.

Even if the company were to go bankrupt, a trust fund and letter of credit would be in place to take care of the landfill following its closure, said Phillips, program administrator of the county Solid Waste Management Department.

“Clint Whitney’s playing his political games,” said Mike Williams, a division president at Waste Management of Ventura County. “He’s got to say these things. He’s got to protect his existence; so be it. The fact is that a private organization that runs landfills has private experience in running landfills and can do a better job.”

VRSD is not required to meet county contract requirements, such as a rate increase cap of 7%, whether or not inflation exceeds that, Williams said. And unlike VRSD, Waste Management would pay $2 million a year in taxes to the county government, he said.

As for how Waste Management would run a Weldon landfill, Williams pointed to the Simi Valley Landfill, where decaying trash has not even produced enough methane gas to feed a small energy-generating plant that was planned.

Financially, Williams said, “Last year we just about broke even. We haven’t been at the tonnage levels we should be.”

A private operator such as Waste Management would give trash ratepayers a buffer against the unexpected, said Martin, the county Solid Waste Management Department director.

“The public has said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cheaper to have this publicly owned?’ ” Martin said. “Yes. One, if you can get flow control, and two, if you’re lucky. . . . You only have to look as far as Bailard to understand that you’ve got to hope you’ve had enough foresight to put enough money away to cover any possibility.”

Meanwhile, the Ojai Valley Assn. for Clean Air, the city of Ojai and a variety of environmental groups are pushing Hammond Canyon as an alternative landfill site.

The 550-acre Hammond site, about 4 1/2 miles northeast of Weldon, sits on an 1,800-acre ranch owned by Harry Knill of Santa Barbara and Ed Conner of the San Francisco area.

Hammond proponents say a landfill there would send less pollution to the Ojai Valley than would a Weldon landfill.

“The prevailing daytime airflow comes up from Ventura, and it carries emissions in from Weldon” to the Ojai Valley, said Carl Huntsinger, president of the Ojai Valley Assn. for Clean Air.

However, experts say that depends on which way the wind blows--and at least part of the time the wind can also blow from Hammond to the Ojai Valley.

Also, trucks must drive farther from California 33 to unload at Hammond, which would cause more air pollution overall. And the site is a greener, richer wildlife habitat that stands to lose more flora and fauna than Weldon would, Hammond critics say.

Naming a landfill site has become a balancing game, said the Resource Management Agency’s Berg.

Interest groups and city governments alike give weight to the factors that matter to them most--such as air quality, effects on wildlife and proximity to people--while few seem to consider that the trash they produce must go somewhere , he said.

“There’s probably no perfect place to put it,” Berg said. “When you say ‘a dump,’ people get the image of tires and garbage and flies. A properly operated landfill is actually much less of a nuisance than people fear it is. People get a vision in mind that is not based on reality at all.”

Indeed, officials at the Bailard and Simi Valley landfills say that misconceptions about modern trash-handling breed unfounded contempt.

“The problem is lack of understanding by the people that are making the decisions,” said Mike Williams of Waste Management as he drove around the Simi Valley Landfill.

“We, in the course of the last seven years, have attempted to educate people about what a modern landfill can be like, by offering tours of this location and Weldon,” he said.

“They can come out and observe the operation, they can come out and sniff around--literally--and find there’s no odors. A lot of these questions in people’s minds can be eliminated. We’ve had very few take us up on the tours because they don’t want to know.”

Recycling Deadline

As the Weldon review process plods toward an expected final vote by the Board of Supervisors in May, the 1995 state deadline for cities to cut landfill use by 25% keeps bearing down on Ventura County.

So far, the only recycling facility handling municipal trash on a grand scale is Gold Coast Recycling of Ventura.

Opened in August, 1990, primarily to serve Ventura, Gold Coast now sorts about 150 tons per day of residential trash from most cities in western Ventura County, and about 75 tons per night of commercial trash collected in Ventura. Recyclables are sold to buyers as far away as the metals market in Osaka, Japan, while the rest is sent on to landfills.

Gold Coast has bid to operate the materials recycling facility planned for Camarillo by the county Waste Commission, but could not meet Oxnard’s requirement for companies with at least three years’ experience.

Two companies--Facilities System Engineering Corp. of Inglewood and BLT Enterprises of Los Angeles--have submitted bids to Oxnard and the county.

The success of either recycling plant will depend on whether enough cities join to commit enough trash and dumping fees to the facility to support it, officials say.

“That is not predicated on the state, it is predicated on our marrying tons together and exploring the market,” said Chase, Ventura’s environmental coordinator. “If you don’t marry the tons, you can’t play the game.”

“The cities will have to join or miss the ’95 deadline,” said Whitney of the VRSD.

The district is backing the Oxnard project because its member cities did not believe the county facility would be running in time to help them meet the state recycling rules, he said.

“Our board was left with a dilemma,” Whitney said. “Do we sit here and twiddle our thumbs doing nothing while these guys (fool) around for another four or five years and our members miss their deadlines?”

Oxnard, which sends only 6% of its trash to recycling and the rest to make up half of Bailard’s daily intake, chose to become the lead city in developing the recycling facility “because it was desperate,” Whitney said. “They said, ‘We have a gun to our head.’ ”

That kind of pressure countywide may also bring a resolution to “dueling MRFs,” eventually meshing the two projects, and it may force the cities to come together in supporting formation of the county Waste Management Authority, said Martin, the county waste management department director.

“The decisions are going to drive us together to reach compromises, particularly on an MRF,” she said. “We’re really under the gun. We have until the first week in March to get the legislation in in the ’93 session.”

She added, “Unfortunately, the decisions on facilities have preceded the implementation of the new waste authority. . . . We’re trying to act as if that framework were in place.”

Most city trash officials say they can, with construction of a regional recycling facility, meet the 1995 goal of reducing trash generation by 25%. But it will take much more work to bring them to the 50% reduction required by 2000, such as a countywide home-composting program, they said.

Ventura, for instance, is recycling 12% to 13% of its trash at Gold Coast through a program it introduced in 1990, said Chase.

“We’ve been recycling our brains out,” Chase said. “Last year alone, this community recycled nearly 13,000 tons of material . . . . Collectively, the rest of the county came up to 9,000 tons.”

Meanwhile, Thousand Oaks is experimenting with three separate recycling plans for regular recyclables--cans, bottles and newspaper--and green waste such as lawn trimmings and tree limbs, which make up 40% of household trash, officials there said.

In one area, customers fill their own containers with green waste that is picked up every week, said Carolyn Greene, a solid waste planner for the city.

In another area, the city provided 90-gallon containers to be picked up once a week by trash haulers driving semiautomatic trucks, which mechanically hoist and empty the containers.

Customers in a third area each get a 90-gallon container that is picked up one week for green waste and the second week for recyclables such as cans and bottles, Greene said.

Ventura County’s ability to meet the goals of AB 939 and dodge massive fines for noncompliance will hinge on the cities’ ability to work together, officials said.

No one has admitted defeat in the trash crisis, but many agree that unless the arguing stops and work on solutions continues, Ventura County’s communities will suffer from their inability to manage trash.

“Where we are right now, with Weldon Canyon and Hammond Canyon and Bailard, is we’re right back to 1985,” said Martin.

“We have ostensibly the same environmental issues, but if you look under the issues, we have the same issues of public versus private, the continuity of the sanitation district and the presumed balance of powers between the county and the cities,” she said.

“And I think it’s time for us to resolve all that. . . . I think people understand the problem, they just disagree on how to solve it.”

County Landfill Use and Recycling

The bulk of the county’s trash goes to Bailard and Simi Valley Landfills. Some cities send trash to Toland Road Landfill in Ventura County, while others ship trash to landfills in Los Angeles County, where dumping fees are cheaper. The site of a new landfill for western Ventura County has yet to be picked.

* Where Cities Take Their Trash

Landfill/ Recycling/ Monthly home Cities tons per week tons per week pickup rate Camarillo Bailard/980 Gold Coast/106 $17.85 others/139 Fillmore Toland Rd/192 Gold Coast/39 $18.54 Moorpark Simi Valley/196 various/45 $17.05 Ojai Bailard/150 Gold Coast/23 $20.81 Oxnard Bailard/3,846 Gold Coast/96 $ 6.55 Port Hueneme Bailard/109 Gold Coast/10 $12.75 Santa Paula Toland Rd/555 various/95 $18.00 Chiquito Cyn/29 Simi Valley Simi Valley/3,667 various/40 $14.55 Chiquito Cyn/135 Thousand Simi Valley/1,550 various/297 $16.60 Oaks Calabasas/950 Ventura Bailard/1,244 Gold Coast/340 $16.82 Simi Valley/367 Chiquito/71 Unicorporated Bailard/533 various/261 varies Areas Chiquito/392 Simi Valley/263

Note: Tonnage figures are rounded to the nearest ton and represent the cities’ and county’s best estimates as of 1992.

Handling Ventura County’s Trash -- A Chronology

Over the past 30 years, Ventura County residents’ trash has been dumped into a variety of landfills run by several different entities. As Bailard Landfill nears the end of its life, officials are struggling with proposals to build a new landfill in Weldon Canyon and merge responsibilities for trash handling and planning under one countywide Waste Management Authority.

AGENCIES

Ventura County: Department of Public Works operates all landfills until 1972, then turns responsibility for planning and operation over to VRSD.

: In 1981, county takes back planning responsibility from VRSD.

Ventura Regional Sanitation District (VRSD): Established in 1970 to regulate wastewater. It took over landfill operations from the county in 1972.

: (PROPOSED) New County Waste Management Authority Proposed in Nov. 1991 to take over trash facilities and planning countywide.

FACILITIES

Bailard Landfill: Opened in 1961 by a private company and taken over in 1978 by VRSD. It must be closed by Dec. 7, 1993. VRSD wants the deadline extended to May, 1997.

Simi Valley Landfill: Opened in 1969 by the county, taken over in 1972 by VRSD and bought in 1982 by Waste Management, Inc.. It is permitted to operate until 2004.

Toland Road Landfill: Opened in 1970 by the county and taken over in 1972 by VRSD. It is permitted to operate until 2033.

Tierra Rejada Landfill: Opened in 1962 by the county, taken over and closed in 1972 by VRSD. It is now owned by Rancho Simi Recreation District. In 1991, state inspectors ordered a multi-million-dollar cleanup after finding toxic chemicals leaking into groundwater at the site.

Santa Clara Landfill: Opened in 1962 by Oxnard and taken over in 1972 and reopened in 1974 by VRSD. It was closed in 1982 and covered the River Ridge Golf Course and subdivision.

Coastal Landfill: Opened in 1982 and closed in 1989 by VRSD. It is undergoing capping and landscaping.

Gold Coast Recycling Facility: Opened in August 1990 to handle trash primarily from Ventura. It now recycles trash from most cities in western Ventura County.

Weldon Canyon Landfill (Proposed): Identified in 1975 as a potential site for a future west county landfill. The landfill proposed by Waste Management, Inc. is headed for a vote by the Board of Supervisors in May, 1993 and projected to open in 1995 if approved.

Trash at a Glance BAILARD LANDFILL Opened: 1961 Closure date: Dec. 7, 1993 Tons per day accepted: 1,400 Owners: A group of private investors, including members of the Bailard and Van Wingerden families Operator: Ventura Regional Sanitation Dist. Dumping fee: $44.50/ton Space remaining: 100,000 tons by closure date or 1.25 million tons by extended date of May, 1997 GOLD COAST RECYCLING CENTER Opened: August, 1990 Closure date: None Tons per day accepted: 222 (125 are recycled; 81 tons of nonrecyclable material are sent to Simi Valley Landfill and 16 tons to Chiquito Cyn. Landfill) Owner: Gold Coast Recycling Inc. Operator: Gold Coast Recycling Inc. Dumping fee: $55/ton net (actual fee of $87/ton, minus $32/ton paid back to customers from sale of recyclable material) SIMI VALLEY LANDFILL Opened: 1962 Closure date: 2004, extendable to 2032 Tons per day accepted: 900 (permitted to 3,000) Owner: Waste Management Inc. Operator: Waste Management Inc. Dumping Fee: $36.80 Space remaining: 6,731,428 tons TOLAND ROAD LANDFILL Opened: 1970 Closure date: 2033 Tons per day accepted: 122 Owners: Ventura Regional Sanitation Dist. Operator: Ventura Regional Sanitation Dist. Capacity: 2 million tons Dumping fee: $40.50/ton Space remaining: 2.5 million cubic yards WELDON CANYON (Proposed landfill site) Projected opening date: (if approved by supervisors in May): 1994 or 1995 Projected site life: 27 years Capacity: 1,400 tons per day Owner: Bonsall family Proposed operator: Waste Management Inc.