Petitions for Landfill Ballot Initiative Filed : Trash: Firm pushing the proposed Weldon Canyon facility wants a vote. Opponents question the tactics used to gain signatures.

The firm pushing to build a landfill at Weldon Canyon turned in nearly twice the required number of petition signatures Monday to put the question to Ventura County voters this fall.

But opponents, charging that Taconic Resources misled county residents to secure the 32,994 names, vowed to use any legal means necessary to keep the initiative off the November ballot.

“We are not surprised that they have the amount of signatures, given the tactics they used,” said Nina Shelley, an Ojai City Council member who opposes the project. “If it does get on the ballot, we intend to go forward” with legal challenges, she said.

Taconic is trying to accomplish what another waste management company failed to do after a decade of effort: Get past the county Board of Supervisors and win local support for a landfill in the rugged canyon between Ojai and Ventura.

Starting the petition drive barely three weeks before the June 6 deadline, the San Diego County firm hired a political consultant and petition gatherers who signed up one in 20 county voters in support of the project. Company representatives turned in 75% more than the 18,753 signatures needed at the county registrar of voters office Monday.

“The reason we were able to do this so quickly and so thoroughly is that the people support this initiative,” said Larry Reemer, the San Diego political consultant who directed the drive. “You can’t manufacture support of this depth and this breadth. I have to admit, for a trash dump it really surprised me.”

Supporters said names came from across the county, with only Ojai and Ventura voters balking at the project. “There’s a lot of support in Oxnard, Camarillo and Santa Paula,” said Scott Montgomery, a Moorpark City Council member who supports the landfill proposal. “Basically there is broad-based support in eight of the 10 cities.”

The proposed dump would take all the non-recyclable trash from Ventura, Oxnard, Ojai and Camarillo, proponents say.

Opponents fear that the 551-acre landfill would also draw waste from Los Angeles County and other states. They say county voters did not always know what they were signing.

“They have misrepresented this right from the beginning,” said Doris Black, who lives about 2,000 feet from the canyon. “I think it’s unfair that the people signing it have no idea this is going to be a mega-dump.”

Ruth Shimer of Ventura was leaving Wal-Mart in Oxnard one day when a man asked her to sign a petition in support of a recycling center at Weldon Canyon.

“Isn’t it a landfill?” she recalled asking him. He finally acknowledged that it was after she pointed out the landfill language on the petition, said Shimer, who complained to Shelley about the incident.

Velta Teegarden of Oak View encountered a man looking for signatures outside the Price Club in Oxnard. Three times he told her that signing the petition could stop the canyon project, she said. Finally, he admitted that it would put the issue on the November ballot.

Project supporters acknowledged that about five of the 60 to 70 paid and volunteer signature gatherers had “tended to be misleading.”

“We had enough complaints brought to our attention (and) they were fired,” said Jim Jevens, a consultant for Taconic Resources who also worked on the project for Waste Management Inc., the original company pushing the landfill.

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Teegarden called the Oxnard Police Department about the petition incident, but officers said they could take no action. Likewise, the voter registrar’s office can do nothing about false oral claims as long as the written material on the petition is accurate, said assistant registrar Bruce Bradley.

“As the petition process gets more utilized and abused, perhaps there will be legislation” to deal with false claims, Bradley said.

The registrar’s office must now certify the names and signatures on the petitions, a task that could be delayed a week or two because of today’s election. Once the petitions are certified, the Board of Supervisors is legally bound to place the issue on the ballot, Bradley said.

“The don’t have any alternatives,” he said. “It’s a formality.”

Supervisor Maggie Kildee, an opponent of the landfill, said she has asked the county counsel to advise the board on possible options for stopping the measure from getting on the ballot.

“It’s like blocking a vote of the people, and I certainly am not in favor of doing that,” Kildee said. “But I don’t think this is the right way to go about a land-use decision.”

Ojai leaders hope to persuade the county board to dismiss the ballot initiative for legal reasons. The Ojai City Council has discussed the issue in closed session but has declined to reveal its legal strategy.

Council members have argued that the company cannot use a ballot initiative to circumvent the will of the county board on a land-use issue.

Last year, Waste Management Inc. withdrew its proposal for the landfill when it became clear that a majority of the supervisors would not approve the project. Taconic’s petition drive effectively goes around the board, while still leaving the landfill subject to various county and state regulatory agencies.

NEXT STEP

The Ventura County registrar of voters must examine the Weldon Canyon petitions to make sure the names belong to registered voters and that the signatures match those on county records. The certification process will probably be delayed for two to three weeks because of today’s election. After certification, the measure would go to the county Board of Supervisors. Barring a legal problem, the board is required to place the initiative on the November ballot, officials said.