Manager of Landfills Buys Adjacent Land : Sanitation: Farmland next to Bailard and Coastal dumps is acquired by the agency to avoid a suit on methane deposits.

The agency that manages Bailard and Coastal landfills has paid $1.3 million for 53 acres of farmland adjacent to the dumps to avoid being sued over methane gas detected beneath the property two years ago.

Just one year ago, the same property was considered a prime site for a park with bike trails and lakes. But officials at the Ventura Regional Sanitation District now say they have no plans to transform the landfills and farmland into a regional park for the Oxnard area.

“The park idea is dead on the part of the district,” said Camarillo Councilwoman Charlotte Craven, who is also a sanitation district director. “If it were ever to come forward, it would probably be after the (Bailard) landfill closed. And it would have to come out of a conservancy or the county recreation department.”

The land on both sides of Victoria Avenue at the Santa Clara River will serve as a buffer around both dumps, protecting the regional sanitation district and local cities from liability because of methane gas seepage.

The acquisition also ensures that the district will not be forced to settle lawsuits from claims already filed by the former farmland owners--Ag Land Services and the Ida Swift Trust, district lawyer Mark Zirbel said.

The legal claim filed by the trust cited the presence of dangerous levels of methane gas on the farmland border in 1992 and 1993.

Zirbel said a complex gas extraction system at the Coastal Landfill was shut down during that time as the district sealed off the dump as part of a multiyear closure process. Once the methane pumping system was turned back on, the gas stopped migrating under the farmland, he said.

Managers of the Ida Swift Trust also complained about poor drainage on their property because of the Bailard Landfill, and damage to agricultural crops by thousands of sea gulls hovering over the landfill.

“The onslaught of sea gulls sits on fields when they’re freshly planted and then the seeds won’t come through,” trust attorney Allen Camp said.

Zirbel said the sanitation district bought the 53 acres in late July after Camp approached the board of directors and offered a good price.

“Our expectation was that they would press their litigation and there would have been some kind of cost for defense, and we likely would have had to make some settlement,” he said.

On Thursday, the district’s board approved the use of operating funds to cover part of the cost of the purchase until a reserve fund is replenished with money from dumping fees.

About half of the 53 acres will continue to be used by a vegetable grower, who leases the land for $24,000 a year.

The idea for turning both dumps into a regional park surfaced in spring, 1993, as the sanitation district sought to extend the life of the Bailard Landfill to May, 1997.

Bailard Landfill--which takes in about 1,000 tons of trash a day--had been set to close last December. A three-year extension was granted in June by a state rubbish board, despite protests from some neighbors. Some Oxnard officials had supported the extension but only if they got a park in return.

Since then, the abandonment of the park proposal has left its supporters disappointed.

“This is a natural thing for them to do, to renege on what they had promised the city of Oxnard,” said Supervisor John K. Flynn, who voted not to extend the life of the landfill.

“Oxnard residents want the Bailard Landfill to look good when (the district) leaves it,” he said. Grass-seeding programs are not enough, he said. “It’s going to look pretty terrible.”

Craven said the district’s board of directors decided not to consider a park--at least until Bailard closes--because the construction would have required charging cities higher dumping fees and conducting an extensive environmental review.

“It was just more than any of us wanted to get into,” Craven said.