Cities’ Urge Court to Close Landfill

Toland Road Landfill should be closed because Ventura County officials failed to follow their own policies when they allowed the dump to expand, an attorney representing Fillmore and Santa Paula told the state Court of Appeal on Tuesday.

The two cities are appealing an August 1996 decision by Superior Court Judge Joe Hadden to deny an injunction that would have prevented the landfill from receiving additional trash. Hadden ruled that granting the injunction would impose a financial impact on the general public that outweighed the additional dust, traffic and noise that the landfill would cause.

Just days before the ruling, the landfill had begun taking about 1,300 tons of trash a day from throughout western Ventura County, nearly 10 times the 135 tons a day it had previously received.

Ventura attorney Katherine Stone contended that the landfill, which lies midway between the two Santa Clara Valley agricultural communities she represents, is inconsistent with the county’s General Plan policies protecting agriculture.

Indeed, the Ventura County Planning Commission recognized that when the panel denied the Ventura Regional Sanitation District the conditional-use permit it needed to open the landfill, she said. However, that decision was subsequently--and incorrectly--overruled by the Board of Supervisors, partly because they were misled by an inadequate environmental document prepared by the sanitation district, she maintained.

“They failed to proceed in the matter as required by law,” Stone told the three-judge panel. “Basically, the conditional-use permit is unconstitutional.”

The appeal court is expected to reach a decision in about a month.