Dump Site Alternatives

The final decision by the county Board of Supervisors to approve or disapprove the Weldon Canyon landfill will be made in the next two months. The extensive study of this landfill has resulted in an alternative that is clearly superior: maximum recycling and rail hauling the trash out of Ventura County.

A Weldon landfill would create more pollution in all west county communities than the maximum recycling/rail haul alternative. The 600 trash truck trips going into a Weldon landfill would start either at a Camarillo or Oxnard recycling station passing by Ventura toward the Ojai Valley. The air pollution for all these communities would be increased by Weldon-bound trash trucks.

The Weldon landfill itself would pollute county air. All of this would be unnecessary if we recycled as much trash as possible and then hauled what is left out of our county by train.

Studies show that recycling creates many times more jobs than a landfill. However, a Weldon landfill would discourage recycling and job creation. The Weldon landfill operator needs huge amounts of trash to collect enough fees to pay for the tens of millions of dollars of operating costs for this trash dump. It pays for the landfill operator and the county to do minimum recycling.

If the Weldon landfill opens, the operator, Waste Management Inc., would have a landfill monopoly in Ventura County possibly for 70 years. Who would control our future trash policy, we the people and our representatives or a powerful corporation?

BRUCE ANSELMO

Ventura

Anselmo is president of the North Ventura Avenue Coalition