FILLMORE/SANTA PAULA : Toland Road Landfill Expansion Pondered

With Bailard Landfill in Oxnard scheduled to close by May, 1997, county waste planners are eyeing the Toland Road Landfill between Santa Paula and Fillmore as a dump site for the 1,300 to 1,500 tons of trash from western Ventura County that goes into Bailard each day.

But residents and City Council members object to the project, saying they will do whatever they can to prevent the expansion of Toland, which is situated amid avocado and lemon orchards off California 126.

“They are going to have opposition, have no doubts about that,” said Fillmore City Councilman Roger Campbell. “It makes no sense for us to be the dumping site of the county.”

In an effort to win support for the idea, Clint Whitney, general manager for the Ventura Regional Sanitation District, has presented details of the expansion plan to officials in both Santa Paula and Fillmore over the past two weeks.

Toland, which has served the Santa Clara Valley communities since 1968, now receives 130 tons of trash a day and has a current expected life of 50 years. If expanded, it would accept up to 1,500 tons of trash a day and reach capacity in 17 to 20 years, Whitney said.

But some neighbors were unhappy with the proposal.

“We live in a beautiful green valley,” Mike Shore, who owns a farm near Toland, told the Santa Paula City Council last week. “We have been able to live with a small landfill for years, but expanding it would truly distort the nature of the region.”

Shore said he worries not only about an increase in traffic, but about the environmental hazards an expansion could bring.

Whitney said he and his staff plan to ask the sanitation district’s board of directors on Feb. 16 to allow them to proceed with an environmental study, which is required to expand Toland.