Rancher Gains Some Ground in Landfill Fight

An Ojai Valley rancher won only partial victory Friday in his bid to force backers of a Weldon Canyon landfill to strike a pro-dump argument from a sample ballot to be sent out for the March election.

The bulk of the statements backing the Weldon Canyon landfill plan will reach voters intact, in sample ballots to be printed by today, Superior Court Judge Joe D. Hadden ruled.

In a hearing at the East County Courthouse, Hadden approved only a few of rancher Carl Huntsinger’s pleas to reword or remove the argument.

Former Moorpark Councilwoman Eloise Brown, Moorpark Councilman Bernardo Perez and taxpayer advocate Jere Robings coauthored the argument for placing a new west county landfill in Weldon Canyon north of Ventura. The new dump would replace Oxnard’s Bailard Landfill after it closes this summer.

Voters will decide on the landfill plan by voting on Measure T in the March 26 election.

Huntsinger asked the judge to cut the entire pro-landfill argument from the sample ballot before it is mailed next week to 350,000 voters.

Huntsinger has alleged the statement erroneously implies that the landfill would be subject to local rate controls and would not accept out-of-county trash.

Lindsay Nielson, an attorney for Huntsinger, argued to Hadden that the rates would be controlled by the landfill operators, not public officials. Also, Nielson argued, Measure T does not cite any ban on foreign trash.

Hadden agreed to remove a statement that trash rates at Weldon Canyon would be set by public officials and not the landfill owner.

Hadden replaced that promise with a phrase stating that rates “will be set by negotiations between public officials and the developer or operator” of the landfill.

The judge also granted Huntsinger’s request to remove a phrase in the ballot statement promising that public officials will regulate all landfill operations, including trash-hauling rates. He removed the words including rates.

But he rejected Nielson’s pleas to excise the landfill backers’ claim in the ballot statement that “. . . the operators of Weldon are pledged NOT to import out-of-county trash” because the promise has not been made part of any landfill contract.

“It says that the proponent proposes to do this,” Hadden said. “It doesn’t say it’s within the existing proposal.”

In fact, representatives of Taconic Resources, the San Diego firm pushing the landfill plan, have pledged to sign an agreement binding the firm to that stipulation.

After the hearing, Brown said of Hadden’s changes: “I’m very comfortable. Essentially, [the argument] is going on the ballot unchanged.”

Her lawyer, Glenn Dickinson, dismissed Hadden’s editing as “superficial changes. We counted the number of words that were taken out, and they’re in the single digits.”

Nielson said afterward he was glad Hadden cut out “the biggest misrepresentation” in the pro-Weldon argument--that the county government would regulate trash-hauling rates at the landfill.