VENTURA : Council Wants Dump Measure Off Ballot

Ventura City Council members voted Monday to oppose the Weldon Canyon landfill initiative, which will ask voters in November whether a 551-acre garbage dump should be built between Ventura and Ojai.

The city may also join Ojai and Ventura County in legally challenging the ballot measure. Voting 6 to 0, City Council members asked the Ventura city attorney to investigate the ramifications of such a challenge. Councilman Jack Tingstrom was absent.

Ojai City Council members have threatened to sue to stop the ballot measure. Three of the five county supervisors, including those representing Ojai and Ventura, also say they oppose the initiative.

However, leaders in other cities, including the west county cities of Oxnard and Camarillo, say they will vote to support the November ballot measure.

Landfill opponents say it would pollute the air in the west county and discourage residents from pursuing progressive recycling efforts by making it too easy to dump their trash. They also claim it could prove so huge that the operators would have to ship in trash from Los Angeles County just to break even.

Supporters of the initiative dismiss many of the landfill opponents’ objections as mere scare tactics designed to slough the trash problem off their shoulders onto someone else’s.

The real issue, they say, is that with the Bailard Landfill in Oxnard reaching capacity, there will soon be nowhere left for the county’s western cities to dump their non-recyclables.