Support for Management Plan Builds : Waste: Ventura expected to back bill for a countywide agency to manage trash collection.

The Ventura City Council on Monday is expected to support proposed state legislation that would form a countywide authority to manage trash collection and disposal.

State Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) is sponsoring the bill, which would allow a merger of the county’s Solid Waste Management Department and the Ventura Regional Sanitation District.

The merger would create a countywide Waste Management Authority--which would have to be approved by Ventura County supervisors, 10 city councils and the state Legislature. The authority would operate as a public utility and control all countywide waste decisions.

The merger is designed to end years of political infighting and wasteful competition for control of landfill and recycling facilities. Officials said the earliest the consolidation would take effect would be January 1994.

“It’s been bouncing around for two years now,” said Councilman Gary Tuttle, who added that the proposed legislation is in its sixth draft because different cities and agencies keep objecting to parts of the bill. “I think this version appeases everybody. We really need one waste authority because it’s just been a real mess.”

The authority would set garbage rates, sanction new landfills and ensure that enough trash is recycled to meet the demands of state law.

Tuttle said that while Ventura should continue trying to cooperate with other cities and the county for a regional solution to trash problems, he will also ask the council Monday to begin looking into the possibility of breaking away from the Ventura Regional Sanitation District if the proposed Waste Management Authority falls through.

Tuttle said he is worried that the Bailard Landfill, where the city currently dumps its trash, will close and the city will have nowhere to go. He said he favors looking at sending the city’s trash to another landfill.

If his proposal is approved, he said, “The city of Ventura will have its own rear end covered and we won’t be held hostage to these countywide politics.”

Tuttle blamed the city of Oxnard and the Ventura Regional Sanitation District for balking at the merger that would create the Waste Management Authority.

Before agreeing to the merger, the sanitation district--made up of representatives from all the west county cities--and the city of Oxnard want to resolve liability issues related to the Bailard and Santa Clara landfills that the district owns.

“They’ve been kicking and screaming,” Tuttle said. “They’ve come up with an objection to each draft.”

The latest draft, which Oxnard opposes, calls for the city’s participation in the merger as a condition to further negotiations with other west county cities about cleanup costs at the Santa Clara site, which is now the River Ridge golf course.

After Santa Clara closed in 1983, Oxnard accepted $1.2 million from the other west county cities in exchange for assuming responsibility of shutting down the dump.

But new environmental regulations and possible leaks into underground aquifers have created unexpected post-closure costs of about $15 million through the year 2014. Oxnard wants the other cities to help bear that expense.

Last June, a deal was struck between Oxnard and sanitation district officials to spread the costs among the cities. In exchange, Oxnard agreed to build a regional trash-recycling plant in the city so the city could cut its dependence on Bailard Landfill.

Oxnard City Councilman Andres Herrera criticized the latest provision, requiring Oxnard to support the Waste Management Authority, as “blackmail, clear and simple.”

Herrera said the other cities are trying to weasel out of the deal struck last June and “are trying to extort us, unless we become members.”

Oxnard officials support the idea of a single countywide waste authority, Herrera said, but he said the latest draft exposes his city to too many liabilities.

The proposed legislation will make the round of all the city councils in the county and the Board of Supervisors for approval. A hearing is scheduled July 16 in the Assembly.