Panel Hears Both Sides in Debate Over Landfill : Trash: An environmentalist urges locating the dump in Hammond Canyon, while a county official defends the Weldon Canyon site.

An environmentalist and a county trash official squared off Wednesday over whether to build a new Ventura County landfill at Weldon Canyon or Hammond Canyon.

While an Ojai environmentalist extolled Hammond Canyon as the cheaper, cleaner site, a county trash official backed the Weldon Canyon project, saying the Hammond proposal underestimates the cost of building, running and closing a landfill.

However, Carl Huntsinger, president of the Ojai Valley Assn. for Clean Air, and Kay Martin, director of the county Solid Waste Management Department, agreed on one thing: Both said they want what is best for Ventura County.

“Our intent right from the beginning has been to cooperate with the county in the siting of a new landfill,” Huntsinger told the Countywide Planning Program, a panel made up of county and city officials, county residents and representatives of special interest groups.

The 15 panel members, who are picked by their constituencies, sometimes offer advice to the Board of Supervisors, panel staff member Nancy Settle said. They had asked to hear the competing canyon proposals so they could compare them, she said.

Huntsinger told the group that air pollution is his association’s main concern with the Weldon Canyon site.

All the pollution generated by trucks, trash-moving equipment and decay at a Weldon Canyon landfill would waft into the Ojai Valley, while only half the pollutants generated at a Hammond Canyon landfill would taint the Ojai Valley’s air, he said.

Huntsinger also said the Weldon site--just east of the Canada Larga exit off the Ojai Freeway, midway between Ojai and Ventura--is much closer to people’s homes than the Hammond site, which lies about five miles to the northeast.

The association also estimates that the county could save $55 million over the life of the landfill if it were built at Hammond at public expense, rather than at Weldon by privately owned Waste Management Inc.

While Weldon Canyon’s owners would be collecting $5.63 of the $37.52-per-ton dumping fee for use of the site--a total of $67 million over the life of the landfill, Huntsinger estimates--it would cost only $11.5 million to take possession of Hammond Canyon by public condemnation, he said.

Huntsinger also pointed to what he said is a 50% profit margin that Waste Management has built into the draft of a contract it has worked out with the county.

Public ownership of the landfill would remove that profit margin, he said. “A city like Oxnard that deposits in the neighborhood of 500 tons per day in the landfill is talking about a savings of $6,000 a day,” he said.

Martin then explained that, since a 1985 study identified Weldon and Hammond canyons as the best and second-best sites for a county landfill, the county has been working toward Weldon.

The association’s proposal fails to consider costs such as improving the five-mile road from the Ojai Freeway to Hammond Canyon, she said. And the more likely and costly scenario is that the county would wind up paying fair market value for the property, rather than taking it by condemnation, Martin said.

“We feel that the acquisition costs that have been presented for Hammond Canyon are very optimistic,” she said. “The condemnation value is always based on the highest and best use.”

Martin also said all the pollutants generated by trucks driving from the Canada Larga exit off the Ojai Freeway to Hammond Canyon would blow into the Ojai Valley.

As for Waste Management’s projected profit margin, she said, it matches profits taken at other privately owned landfills.

In exchange, Martin said, the company would provide a contingency fund and letters of credit to cover the long-term liability of running and closing the landfill.

Waste Management also would assume the financial risk of building a landfill that may not be used by all the cities in the county--and thus, the company may not easily recover its $50-million construction cost.

“In essence, what the public is doing is buying an insurance policy, and the policy is only as good as the company’s assets and liability insurance,” she said, adding that Waste Management’s nationwide parent company would back the Ventura County landfill.

The Board of Supervisors is expected to vote in May on whether to issue a permit for a landfill in Weldon Canyon.

Although the Countywide Planning Program panel will not make an immediate recommendation to the supervisors on this issue, its members wanted to make a comparison of the two sites, said Settle, also a manager of the county Planning Department’s regional projects section.

Before panel members can make a recommendation, they will need a study of the Hammond Canyon site that is comparable to the Weldon studies, she said.

“What (Huntsinger) had to say was a comparison of apples and oranges on the report,” Martin said.