Camarillo Neighbors Mount Effort Against Recycling Plant : Environment: Residents say increased traffic would be intolerable. Firm vows the proposed center wouldn’t be an eyesore.

Martin Etchechoury bought the lot for his Acacia Street house in 1943, part of a budding Camarillo subdivision that was surrounded by orchards of walnut and lemon trees.

Now the Ventura Freeway runs a few blocks from Etchechoury’s house, a huge plastics plant butts against his neighbors’ back yards, and auto repair shops, lumber yards and other businesses encircle the neighborhood.

Choked by industry and cut off from the rest of the city by the freeway, the Rancho Calleguas Gardens subdivision is nevertheless a thriving neighborhood, Etchechoury and other residents say.

But, they say, a proposed recycling plant could destroy the tight-knit community of about 50 families by lowering property values and generating traffic that would make daily life intolerable.

Gold Coast Recycling Inc. of Ventura has proposed converting a large warehouse along the freeway at Mission Oaks Boulevard and Dawson Drive into a center for sorting trash and recyclable materials from throughout western Ventura County.

Under state law, every county and city must cut the amount of waste sent to landfills 25% by 1995 and 50% by the year 2000.

And Gold Coast is one of two companies that have emerged in the quest to build the type of large recycling center necessary for Ventura County and its cities to meet this requirement.

The other is BLT Enterprises of Los Angeles, which is proposing to build a recycling center in Oxnard.

If recommended by the Ventura County Waste Commission and approved by the Camarillo City Council, the Gold Coast plant would have 155 workers sorting up to 1,800 tons of garbage and recyclables every day.

The trash would be sent to landfills, and the recyclable materials would be shipped to manufacturers, company Chairman Bob Cole said.

The operation would be totally enclosed and have state-of-the-art technologies, drawing visitors from around the country, Cole said.

And despite the site’s prominent location near the freeway, company officials promise the plant would not be an eyesore.

Tall trees planted around the 38-acre site would hide the view of trucks entering and leaving the plant, and the building itself would feature the terra-cotta roofs common around Camarillo, Cole said.

But Etchechoury and his neighbors say it would be impossible to disguise what they call “a dump” one-half mile from their homes or ignore the traffic the plant would generate.

“There’s no pretty picture to be painted here because the traffic is there and it’s going to get worse and it’s going to be deadly,” Etchechoury, 71, said.

Because the plant would be geared primarily to serving the west county, from Camarillo to Ojai and Fillmore, many trucks may travel east to get to the center. The three cities in eastern Ventura County--Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley and Moorpark--are considering cooperating on their own recycling plant.

For the proposed Camarillo plant, the eastbound Ventura Freeway exit ramp at Dawson Drive empties traffic onto Petit Street, a two-lane avenue that forms the northern edge of the subdivision.

Already, about 400 vehicles leaving the freeway at the peak of morning rush hour, from 7:30 to 8 a.m., avoid traffic on Petit by detouring through the otherwise quiet residential neighborhood, Camarillo Traffic Engineer Tom Fox said.

The Gold Coast plant would generate traffic from an additional 710 vehicles per day, most of them diesel-burning trucks, according to company and city officials.

“Instead of just having peak-hour traffic, we’re going to have peak traffic all day,” said Mike Nunez, who moved out of the neighborhood two years ago but whose mother and mother-in-law still live on Camarillo Street.

And so the neighborhood that Etchechoury said didn’t complain when the freeway was built in the 1960s or when industry followed soon after, has now mobilized in protest.

“You have to put your foot down at some point,” said Traci Pitts, 37.

Pitts, Etchechoury and dozens of other neighbors in the 52-house subdivision have fanned out across the city, collecting more than 1,200 signatures of people opposed to the project.

Some neighborhood residents, have enlisted the support of friends and relatives from other parts of Camarillo in their fight against the project.

Residents Mark McCarthy, 30, and his brother, Rick, 34, have received help from some of their eight brothers and their father, Mike McCarthy.

Unlike families such as the Pitts and Etchechourys who have lived in the subdivision since it was built, the two McCarthy brothers--who are next-door neighbors--are among some of the younger people who have moved into the neighborhood, attracted by the affordable prices and friendly atmosphere, Mark McCarthy said.

“The whole area, it’s like one giant family,” Rick McCarthy said.

The McCarthys and their neighbors emphasize they’re not opposed to recycling, only to the proposed size and location of the Gold Coast plant.

“It’s too much,” Mark McCarthy said. “It’s too close.”

But Gold Coast officials say the plant’s size and location are among its advantages.

It is along railroad tracks, Cole said, which would allow Gold Coast to eventually ship trash and recyclables by rail to other parts of the country.

The property is large enough to allow other businesses. Among the possible tenants are a firm that produces door veneers from old newspapers and another that manufactures cat litter from discarded junk mail.

But the contest over who will eventually operate the recycling plant is more than a competition for business between Gold Coast and BLT Enterprises.

Depending on the proposal approved by the waste commission, either Oxnard or Camarillo stands to gain fees for serving as host city.

Camarillo officials estimate the Gold Coast project would generate $700,000 in annual revenues for the city.

Despite the attractiveness of such revenues, Camarillo city officials say they have not made up their minds about the Gold Coast proposal.

Planning Director Matthew A. Boden agreed with residents that traffic poses the main problem for the Gold Coast proposal. Consultants are preparing an environmental report on the project that may offer potential solutions to the traffic issue, he said.

One answer may be to divert garbage and recycling trucks off the freeway at the Las Posas Road exit and onto Pleasant Valley Road to Dawson Drive, Boden said.

The environmental report is expected to be completed in about a month, with the issue coming before the Camarillo Planning Commission by the end of June.

Gold Coast officials said they expect a decision from the Ventura County Waste Commission at about the same time.

Meanwhile, residents of Rancho Calleguas Gardens said they’re rooting for BLT Enterprises’ project in Oxnard to win approval from the waste commission.

Residents point out that the Oxnard City Council has already approved the BLT proposal, with no public opposition.

Oxnard Councilman Andres Herrera said city officials plan to proceed with the BLT plant unless the waste commission and other cities make a good case that another recycling facility would better suit Oxnard’s needs.

Traci Pitts’ husband, Robert, whose grandfather helped develop Rancho Calleguas Gardens, said that as an employee for Camarillo’s streets department, he sympathizes with the city’s financial needs.

“I fully understand the city needs revenue,” Robert Pitts said. “But we don’t need to sell our soul and have a dump.”