Ill Will Works Against Shared Garbage Plant, Stadium Project : Trash: There are plans in Ventura and Oxnard for competitive waste facilities with a complex of related businesses.

It is completely impractical, many of those involved acknowledge, to build rival trash mills only miles apart.

But by the middle of next year, Oxnard is scheduled to open a $20-million garbage facility capable of processing more than 2,700 tons of rubbish a day.

Six to 12 months later, Ventura is expected to be home to a $100-million trash plant and environmental business park able to handle about 1,500 tons of garbage daily.

Together, the pair could process nearly twice the heap of trash that west county residents toss out on any given day.

Both city and company officials say building just one garbage facility would make more economic sense. Yet both projects are forging ahead in a high-stakes race to see which can capture the biggest pile of rubbish.

Oxnard City Councilman Tom Holden said he doesn’t think there is room for two trash plants. “I think it all goes back to our cities’ inability to work together,” he said. “This is counterproductive.”

Oxnard officials already have approved the sale of $25 million in bonds to cover the cost of land and construction of a 150,000-square-foot facility, which the city will own.

BLT Enterprises, a Los Angeles-based company, will run the plant, to be built at the southwest corner of Sturgis Road and Del Norte Boulevard in east Oxnard.

Gold Coast Recycling, which now processes 400 tons of recyclables a day at a plant in Ventura, proposes to construct an 80,000-square-foot factory and adjoining environmental business park. The complex would lie on what is now farmland just south of the Ventura Freeway and east of Victoria Avenue.

Gold Coast is owned largely by a trio of county businessmen. Local trash hauler E.J. Harrison & Sons also owns a third of the company.

The company’s ambitious plan includes constructing office and factory space nearby for companies that would turn the recyclables back into usable products. BLT officials say they have a similar plan in that they are trying to persuade such businesses to build alongside the Oxnard plant, although at the businesses’ expense.

Representatives from Gold Coast and the city of Ventura say the Oxnard plant could ultimately perish from a dearth of clientele. Already, they note, Gold Coast’s existing facility on Colt Street has contracts with Camarillo, Santa Paula, Fillmore, Thousand Oaks and Ojai, as well as Ventura.

“Gold Coast was already in existence,” said company spokeswoman Nan Drake. “We were here first. I’m sure there’s going to be a competitive situation going on here, but Gold Coast feels we can stay on the edge.”

Though some Ventura officials disparage BLT’s prospects, city staff members are negotiating with the firm--as well as with Gold Coast and other Southern California waste-disposal services--to see who can give Ventura the best price for rubbish disposal.

“We are shopping the marketplace to determine which choice is best for us,” said Steve Chase, Ventura’s environmental issues coordinator. “We want to remain flexible and guarantee that we face no sharp, sharp rate hikes.”

City politicians, however, say the Oxnard facility would have to make them a very sweet offer before they would consider contracting with their neighbor’s plant over a home-grown company.

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“I would like to see Gold Coast succeed,” Councilman Gary Tuttle said, “because it’s in Ventura, it’s a good business and the environmental park is something I’d love to see in Ventura. But it’s not going to succeed if we don’t send our tons there.”

Meanwhile, a few minutes’ truck haul away, Oxnard officials say that by the time their neighbor’s pricey project opens for business--if indeed it ever does--BLT already will have corralled the bulk of the trash contracts. Gold Coast will never be able to process for less, they say, when their project costs so much more.

“What they are talking about is a $100-million pie in the sky that I don’t think will ever come to fruition,” said Oxnard Councilman Andres Herrera. “They’re going to need everybody in the world to go to their facility in order for it to work.”