Toland Landfill Foes Refuse to Give Up Fight

The expansion has been approved, the operating permits granted and Aug. 26 set as the day when a newly enlarged Toland Road Landfill will open for business as the west county’s sole dump.

So why is it that Linda Bartelson and other residents and growers of the rural Santa Clara Valley continue to fight the dump’s tenfold expansion?

“Because we feel the ramifications of this landfill are going to be disastrous for this valley,” Bartelson said.

Indeed, the battle is not over.

The cities of Santa Paula and Fillmore, which filed a joint lawsuit against the landfill operator, will ask a judge Friday to postpone Toland’s Aug. 26 opening date until their case can be heard this fall. The cities are contending that the project’s environmental impact report is flawed.

Attorneys for the two cities will also argue that the expansion should not go forward until state officials determine whether an active earthquake fault traverses the landfill site, located midway between Santa Paula and Fillmore. The Regional Water Quality Control Board is conducting a study of possible traces of a fault line at the landfill’s southerly entrance.

“You can’t dispose of trash on a fault that cuts right through the existing landfill,” said Katherine Stone, an attorney for the two cities. “This changes the whole economics of the project.”

But representatives of the Ventura Regional Sanitation District, the landfill’s operator, said they believe they will be able to go forward with their expansion plans. They point out that the project and its environmental impact report have already been given approval by several county and state regulatory agencies.

“There are no new issues here,” said Mark Zirbel, an attorney for the sanitation district. “This project has been approved by three independent regulatory agencies with the necessary expertise. We feel very confident.”

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As for the earthquake fault, the sanitation district has conducted several studies and has determined that the Culbertson fault, which runs west of the landfill, does not extend into the dump site, Zirbel said.

“This is all a rehash of studies and analysis that have already been done,” he said. “We’re very confident that the same conclusions will be reached no matter how many times [it is studied].”

Opponents of the project hired their own consultant earlier this year who suggested in his findings that there may be traces of the Culbertson fault within the landfill site. And they are pinning much of their hope in stopping--or at least limiting--the dump expansion on the study’s findings.

“We believe the fault is there,” said Gordon Kimball, who owns property near the dump. “Our desire is to see that the seismic issue is given a fair evaluation. It is our only hope.”

The water board granted the sanitation district a water discharge permit last month on the condition that further study be done to determine if the Culbertson fault extends through the landfill site and whether it is active. A fault that has some shaking activity within the last 11,000 years is considered to be active.

“We’ve discussed doing some additional field work out there with the Ventura Regional Sanitation District,” said Rod Nelson, a senior engineering geologist with the water board. “We think it is appropriate to try and resolve some of the unanswered questions.”

There are plans to do some trench work near the suspected fault site at the end of the month, Nelson said. But it is not clear when he or his staff will have some conclusive findings to present to the board, Nelson said.

If an active fault is found to be within the landfill site, he said, the sanitation district would then have to redesign its expansion project.

Existing regulations say that a landfill can be set up within 200 feet of an active fault, or possibly closer if it can be shown that the dump’s clay liner would not be affected by seismic activity, Nelson said.

Even if an active fault is found within the landfill site, it appears that it “is not going to generate a significant amount of shaking,” Nelson said. The active San Cayetano fault, which runs north of the dump, would be the source of a much greater degree of shaking. This has already been taken into consideration under Toland’s current expansion design.

As long as the sanitation district does not encroach on the area in question, then it will be allowed to continue to accept waste, Nelson said.

Meanwhile, if the sanitation district prevails in court Friday, dozens of trash trucks will begin rumbling down California 126 the following Monday on the way to Toland. Bailard Landfill, the Oxnard-based dump that has long served as the west county’s main repository for trash, is scheduled to close at the end of the week.

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But it will be several months before Toland will meet its capacity of 1,500 tons of trash per day as permitted. That’s because the sanitation district will require that haulers use large transfer trucks, rather than traditional garbage trucks, to dump at Toland. This is to help cut down on truck traffic and noise along California 126.

Because a newly expanded transfer station in Ventura will not be ready for several months, E.J. Harrison & Son’s will continue to haul about 450 tons of west county trash to the Simi Valley Landfill in the interim, said Nan Drake, a company spokeswoman.

If opponents of the Toland Road expansion had their way, the west county would ship all of its trash to Simi Valley on a long-term basis. But they appear to have already lost that battle.

And even as the fight over Toland continues, Kimball acknowledges that opponents of the landfill expansion are facing some pretty tough odds.

“What will happen in the courts system, I don’t know,” Kimball said. “They’ve got a lot of money and good lawyers,” he said of the sanitation district. “And unfortunately, that’s what I think it comes down to.”