Opponents Raise Safety Issues on Ventura Ave. Sites

Opponents of a plan to build houses on a stretch of Ventura Avenue blasted the proposal Tuesday night, charging that the city would be placing homes next to toxic waste sites.

An attorney representing property owners near the site told the Ventura Planning Commission that several oil field waste dumps border the area where the Neel and Huntsinger families and Kinko’s Service Corp. want to build 330 homes. In addition, a concrete pesticide reservoir still seeping noxious chemicals may lie directly below the site where houses are proposed, he said.

The 77-acre site is bounded by Ventura Avenue on the east, the Ojai Freeway on the west, Stanley Avenue on the south and Seneca Street on the north.

“Given that there has been heavy industrial use throughout this area, I think it is shocking that the city staff would propose a residential development there at all,” said Glen Reiser, a lawyer hired by local industrial business owners who want to halt the development.

Steve Perlman, a land-use consultant hired by the property owners, dismissed the charges, calling them a last-minute ploy to undermine the proposal.

“I know there are some concerns, but we have taken them into consideration,” Perlman said.

When members of the Planning Commission pressed Perlman about the potential risks of placing a project on the site, Perlman said his clients had conducted several environmental studies, including a soil study.

“The environmental concerns do not exist in the magnitude being suggested here tonight,” Perlman said.

Reiser said land just north and west of the proposed residential neighborhood was used in the late 1950s and early 1960s to dump waste from oil production. Those products may have leaked into the underground water supply and be circulating beneath the suggested site of the new houses, he said.

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An environmental assessment by the city found that a full environmental review was not necessary. But Reiser said if the city does not halt progress on the development and call for a more extensive environmental review, his clients will sue.

The project calls for constructing commercial and light industrial buildings as well as houses.

The businesses’ owners, worried that they will be slowly forced out by new neighbors who will find their loud, chemical-smelling plants distasteful, hired Reiser to help them oppose the project.

“It’s quite clear to all of us that houses do not belong next to our businesses,” businessman Robert Casey told commissioners.

“People will start to complain because of the noise or the dust, or because we operate all night, or because the trucks are driving through their neighborhood,” Casey said. “They’ll eventually get rid of us and with us will go the jobs we provide.”

Kinko’s, the national copy service headquartered in the area, owns land within the proposed development site and plans to expand onto that property.

But company representatives have warned the city that if the neighborhood surrounding their future central office is not redeveloped from its present industrial use, they may move to another city.

Sommer is a staff writer and Mosk is a correspondent.