Geologists Find No Fault With Landfill

Geologists and engineers from the Ventura County Regional Sanitation District are preparing a report that indicates there are no active earthquake faults threatening the Toland Road Landfill.

At a meeting Friday, geologists from several state and local agencies as well as from a group opposed to the landfill’s planned expansion, heard a presentation from district scientists that said the faults at Toland have not been active for at least 11,000 years, according to Joe Deakin, a senior engineer with the sanitation district, which oversees the landfill operation.

A fault that has had some shaking within the last 11,000 years is considered active, Deakin said.

In September, state officials ordered further study to determine if the faults that cross the land under Toland were active. Active faults could undermine expansion of the 26-year-old trash dump, which once was limited to accepting 135 tons of trash a day but now can take as much as 1,500 tons daily.

Scientists working with opponents of the landfill expansion said earlier this year that fault lines from the Culbertson fault west of the dump and two other faults nearby may also lie under Toland, said Gordon Kimball, an engineer who owns property nearby and has long opposed the planned expansion.

“Their findings seem significant, but our geologist is still trying to date the soil,” Kimball said of the district’s presentation Friday. “It looks more like the soil has been unbroken only for about 8,000 to 10,000 years.”

Sanitation district scientists say their data show that there are no active faults under the property. Kimball said he was a skeptical of the findings “ . . . because they say just what the district wants them to say.”

But he said the findings were significant because they amount to the first detailed geological study performed on the landfill. More meetings are planned.