New Dump Surveys to Zero In on Fault Location

State officials have ordered further studies to determine if an active earthquake fault crosses the area of the Toland Road Landfill, which last month greatly expanded its operations.

“There are some areas that need to be clarified that deal with location and age of possible faulting,” said Rod Nelson, a senior geologist with the Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Representatives for the state water board, the Ventura Regional Sanitation District, which manages the dump site, and landfill opponents met Friday to examine old trenches in the area that were part of previous fault studies.

Afterward, water board officials directed the sanitation district to do more geological studies to determine whether the Culbertson fault, which runs west of the landfill, extends into the dump and whether it is active, Nelson said. A fault that has had some shaking within the last 11,000 years is considered active.

“We want to be pretty convinced that there is not an active fault there,” Nelson said. “And we are the guys that make that determination.”

John Conaway, director of solid waste for the sanitation district, said his consultant’s report should be completed and presented to the water board within the next month.

Conaway said it would be difficult to speculate at this time how much impact it would have on landfill operations if an active fault were found to exist on the landfill site. The landfill, once limited to 135 tons a day, recently was granted a permit to increase that amount to 1,500 tons.

“I’m not sure how much impact it would have,” he said. “But I don’t think it would be that significant.”

Opponents of the landfill expansion hired a consultant earlier this year who suggested in his findings that there might be traces of the Culbertson fault within the landfill site. And they are pinning many of their hopes on limiting the dump’s operations based on the study’s findings.

“We’ve been scorned and shunned and treated like NIMBYS, and the fact of the matter is there is one very serious issue here,” said Gordon Kimball, who owns property near the landfill. “The whole project will have to be redesigned if the truth is allowed to come out.”

Regulations say that a landfill can operate within 200 feet of an active fault. And even if an active fault is found, as long as the sanitation district does not encroach on the fault line, it would be allowed to continue to accept waste, Nelson said. Exactly how much waste it would be able to take, however, depends on the location and size of the fault.