Judge Withdraws From Toland Case

A legal effort to delay the Aug. 26 opening of an expanded Toland Road Landfill will not be heard for another week, after a judge withdrew himself from the case Friday.

After more than an hour of closed-door talks, Municipal Judge Ken Riley, acting as a Superior Court judge, took the bench only to recuse himself from the hearing on a preliminary injunction.

Riley offered to step down because of his friendships with council members in Santa Paula and Fillmore, the cities that have filed a lawsuit against the landfill operator, the Ventura Regional Sanitation District. Attorneys for the sanitation district took Riley up on the offer.

“It’s unfortunate that we couldn’t have a resolution of this issue in light of the ever-shortening deadline,” said Mark Zirbel, an attorney for the sanitation district.

As it now stands, Toland is scheduled to become the west county’s lone dump, after the closure of the Oxnard-based Bailard Landfill on Aug. 24.

Superior Court Judge Joe Hadden has been assigned the case. After assuring attorneys for both sides that he does not foresee having a conflict of interest in the Toland matter, Hadden scheduled a hearing on the injunction for Friday, three days before Toland is scheduled to begin accepting trash for all of western Ventura County. Currently the landfill handles trash chiefly from communities in the Santa Clara Valley.

Santa Paula and Fillmore, which both abut the landfill, oppose Toland’s tenfold expansion, contending that an environmental review of the expansion is flawed.

Their lawsuit against the landfill operator, however, is not expected to be heard until October.

In the interim, the cities are asking that a judge postpone the landfill’s opening until the lawsuit is resolved.