Camarillo Company Gets Head Start in Waste Race

Used oil, antifreeze, batteries, pesticides, paint. Toxic items no one wants to keep around their homes. Also items no municipality wants to collect, except for special hazardous waste roundups conducted only once or twice a year.

But Ventura County should soon get its first permanent facility for collecting household hazardous materials.

The county has not decided where such a facility should be; however, one Camarillo-based company has already poured the foundation of what will be its new corporate headquarters and household hazardous materials collection facility.

MSE Environmental Inc. will hold a groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday and plans to open its 15,000-square-foot facility this summer whether or not the county selects it for the job or chooses one of two other companies interested in providing such services.

“The cities and county have not committed to [using] MSE, but we have been looking at it as a possibility,” said Norma Camacho, planning division manager of the Ventura County Solid Waste Management Department. “We are looking at other proposals as well and are still evaluating our options.”

Philip Environmental, which has its headquarters in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and a regional office in Los Angeles, has presented a proposal to the county to collect household hazardous waste although it has no specific site in mind. Camacho says Philip Environmental has left it up to the county and participating cities to decide where its waste handling facility would be located should it receive the contract.

The other interested company, Advanced Environmental Technical Services, would use the Simi Valley Landfill, where there is an existing concrete pad, as the site of its operation. Advanced Environmental Technical Services is owned by Illinois-based Waste Management, which operates the Simi landfill. Waste Management would not seek any county funds to build its hazardous waste collection facility, according to Annette Kluznik, product manager.

MSE is also willing to build its facility at no cost to the county, said Frank Doerfler Jr., president of MSE.

“There is something obviously wrong in this county if they’re not going to go with us as the facility and we’re willing to do this for free,” Doerfler said. “This might be coming down to a matter of big business and the power they have in county and city government versus a small local business.”

MSE was looking at purchasing the land and developing a building in Camarillo before the county requested proposals. It’s also the only company that has land and is actually building a facility, said Becky Guay, management assistant for the Camarillo Public Services Department.

“As far as I’m concerned, they’ve gone through the environmental review process with Camarillo and have been approved by the Planning Commission and the City Council, who approved MSE’s plan last summer,” Guay said. “It’s like a baseball stadium--if you build it, people will come. It’s a business decision. They think they’re providing a needed service and hoping people will come.”

Regardless of which firm gets the county contract to operate a permanent collection facility, the cities and county will need to devise a way to pay for it.

“The cost to operate at our facility would be equal to or less than these one-day events they have now,” Doerfler said.

And Guay already has a tentative plan in place: She says the city has a monthly surcharge of 25 cents per household built into refuse collection bills to cover costs of the annual hazardous waste collections.

Surveys indicate that county residents would prefer a permanent facility to dispose of hazardous waste as opposed to annual or semiannual roundups, Camacho said.

“But there are a lot of contractual issues that still need to be worked out,” she said. “An agreement would still have to be established between MSE and the county and the cities, and a sponsor would also have to be identified before the permits from the state can be finalized.”

MSE recently approached Camarillo officials about sponsoring the facility, and Guay says the city is considering the request.

If Camarillo were to sponsor MSE, it means that the city would be responsible for signing certain hazardous waste documents mandated by the state and for ensuring that the waste is properly disposed of, Guay said.

“It is no different than what we do now for our one-day collection events,” she said.

Camarillo Councilman Bill Liebmann said he would like to see MSE receive the city contract.

“I was on the Planning Commission when the project was approved,” he said. “The area, design and operation of the facility is more than adequate to provide whatever environmental safeguards are needed to assure there would be no spills or other hazards. The more services for both government and private industry that can be provided by businesses in Camarillo, the better for the city of Camarillo.”

MSE officials stress that the company’s success is not dependent on receiving the county contract. The employee-owned firm provides hazardous materials management, environmental engineering and consulting. It opened in Thousand Oaks in 1986 and moved to Camarillo in 1991.

MSE determines the presence of hazardous materials contamination, assesses environmental risks and develops cleanup strategies for municipalities, state governments, lenders and industry. MSE’s staff of 28 full- and 50 part-time employees includes scientists, chemists, specialists and engineers who provide on-site services throughout the United States.

“The company works with 20 counties in the state collecting material with teams in trucks,” said Frank Doerfler Sr., MSE chief executive officer. “The material is packed and sealed in drums and then goes directly from the sites to an incinerator in Arkansas. The material does not come down here to Camarillo and is not warehoused here.”

He said the hazardous waste collected in Camarillo would be stored for only a few days before being shipped to Arkansas.

A sizable portion of MSE’s business involves pesticide collection, which the company has done in 34 of California’s 54 counties and in 10 other states. Again, he said, the material is packed in drums and shipped to Arkansas.

So regardless of what the county decides to do, MSE officials say they already have enough business to keep them busy.

“Prior to this, cities have run one-day collections once a year--you have to have this stuff around your house all year and then wait in line all day the one day it’s collected,” Doerfler said. “What the cities are saying now is: ‘Come up with a way we can have these collections more often, so people won’t be so likely to put these materials in the trash.’ ”

The CEO envisions the facility to work something like this: The first Saturday of every month, Camarillo residents can bring their hazardous household materials to the facility; the second Saturday, Thousand Oaks can do the same; the third Saturday, Ventura, and so on, including Oxnard, Moorpark and Simi Valley. The facility would be open two days out of the week to accommodate all of the cities.

To not increase traffic on the way to the site, which is adjacent to Camarillo Airport, Doerfler has a plan for outlying areas: a 44-foot trailer completely equipped for hazardous material collection will drive through areas, such as Ojai, Santa Paula and Fillmore, at least once a month.

“The whole idea is to make this convenient for the citizens so this stuff doesn’t end up in the trash,” he said.