Firm Offers to Take Trash to Arizona and L.A. County

With a nasty debate looming over a proposed Weldon Canyon landfill, a national waste management firm is offering to take Ventura County’s trash and dump it in Los Angeles County and Arizona.

Browning-Ferris Industries Inc., the nation’s second-largest waste handler, has approached city and county officials with a plan to accept trash at three existing landfills--at a price the firm says would be cheaper than Weldon’s rates.

BFI will present the plan this month to the Ventura County Waste Commission, an advisory group of city and county leaders.

“There appears to be a great need for a solution,” said Hardy M. Strozier, a consultant working with BFI in Ventura County.

“The Weldon Canyon controversy is a terrible political monkey on the backs of some politicians. The Bailard Landfill is about to shut down,” Strozier said, referring to the planned closure in 1997 of the Bailard Landfill near Oxnard. “You put those two facts together and you think they would want to find a solution.”

Supervisor Maggie Kildee said she had not yet been briefed on the proposal, but said the concept sounded reasonable.

“I think that’s exactly the thing we’re going to see more and more, people competing for the waste, and we’re getting a better price for it,” said Kildee, a foe of the Weldon project. With the excess space in the region’s landfills, she said, Ventura County does not need another site.

But proponents of the Weldon Canyon project argue that opening a new local landfill would provide a closer, cheaper site for garbage disposal, especially if BFI chose to send the trash to its La Paz landfill on the California-Arizona border. Weldon Canyon’s rates, or tipping fees, cannot exceed $39 a ton, under conditions spelled out in a ballot initiative.

“If they can ship it to La Paz for less than $39 a ton, I’ll give them a lot of waste,” said Richard Chase of Taconic Resources Inc., the prime mover behind the ballot initiative to authorize the Weldon landfill. “I think it’s clearly not possible to do.”

Steven Anderson, BFI’s regional landfill manager, acknowledged he could not beat that price at La Paz, but doubted that Weldon Canyon could keep its rates that low. The relatively small volume proposed for the 551-acre site and the time it would take to gain approval for the project would only add to Weldon’s costs, he said.

At Sunshine Canyon, near Granada Hills, tipping fees lie in the $20 to $30 range, Anderson said. Also, BFI could use a landfill farther east at Azusa.

And, he said, Ventura County could avoid the continuing headache of Weldon Canyon. Plans for the controversial landfill appeared dead last year, when Waste Management Inc. withdrew its proposal after years of trying to woo unfriendly county supervisors.

But Chase’s Taconic Resources resurrected the proposal with a petition drive to put the matter before voters. The petition drive garnered enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot. Now the Ojai City Council is preparing to file suit to stop the landfill, which would be situated between Ojai and Ventura.

BFI officials say they hope to offer a less political, more palatable option.

One Weldon foe, nonetheless, remained cautious.

“We’ll see what BFI has to say,” said Nina Shelley, an Ojai City Council member who sits on the county Waste Commission. “I have some concern with such a huge corporation coming into the county.”

Shelley said she would prefer to see the western Ventura County cities rely largely on recycling.

Also, shipping the waste out of the county could also anger San Fernando Valley activists, who have waged a fierce legal battle to block expansion of the Sunshine Canyon landfill, situated at Interstate 5 and California 14.

Valley activists were surprised Friday to hear about BFI’s interest in Ventura County, especially since the firm cited Los Angeles County’s mounting garbage problem to justify a Sunshine Canyon expansion.

“BFI would not dare bring up that subject to our faces,” said Terry du Soleil of the North Valley Coalition of Concerned Citizens. “The justification for Sunshine Canyon is that there is this overwhelming need for landfills.”

Rosemary Woodlock, attorney for the coalition, agreed. “They have marvelous charts down in L.A. County that say we should be standing in garbage right now.”

BFI filled up its first landfill at the site in 1992 and has been waiting for court approval to start on a 17-million-ton expansion. Construction began last week, only to be stopped by a judge’s order Tuesday.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Diane Wayne will decide July 12 whether to make the order permanent or allow the landfill operators to continue cutting down trees at the site.

Anderson said the landfill has “ample space” for trash from Ventura and Los Angeles counties. “The entire market in the Los Angeles area is very competitive,” he said. “Since our site has been closed down for a couple of years, we want to build up (business) again.”