Board Says Fault Near Dump Requires Study

The operator of Toland Road Landfill on Monday was granted a permit necessary to expand the dump, on one condition. If an earthquake fault near the landfill is found to be active, several precautions must be taken.

The Ventura Regional Sanitation District wants to expand the landfill near Santa Paula from its current 135 tons of trash a day to 1,500.

The Ventura County Board of Supervisors has already approved the expansion, and the sanitation district is now in the process of securing all of the necessary operating permits before it proceeds with its plans.

The district Monday was awarded a waste discharge permit from the Regional Water Quality Control Board. The permit requires the district to provide proper lining at the landfill to prevent leakage and to regularly monitor the area’s ground water for possible contamination.

But the board also asked for further investigation of a possible active fault that runs just southwest of the dump, said Sue Smith, a spokeswoman for the sanitation district. The investigation will follow up a 1992 study of the Culbertson fault.

Smith said the sanitation district has already conducted several studies that determined the fault is neither active nor extends across the landfill as suggested by the 1992 report.

If, however, the fault is found to be active, Smith said the district has been ordered to take several precautions. These would include erecting barriers around the landfill and requiring that no trash be disposed of within 200 feet of the fault.

The sanitation district still must obtain an operating permit from the state waste board before it can move forward with its expansion of Toland Road Landfill, Smith said. A hearing on that permit is scheduled later this month.