County Orders Beautification of Toland Road Dump Facility

Ventura County supervisors on Tuesday ordered officials who run the Toland Road Landfill to take steps to eliminate dust clouds and unsightly trash mounds at the dump.

The action came during a status report on the landfill, which began accepting a tenfold increase in garbage in 1996. About a dozen farmers and residents near the facility, located off California 126 between Santa Paula and Fillmore, urged supervisors to do more to control environmental problems at the landfill.

Residents also complained that the dump is visible from the highway.

“You asked to expand in the middle of industrial agriculture,” Chairwoman Judy Mikels told officials from the Ventura Regional Sanitation District, which oversees the landfill. “You did get your conditional use permit. You clearly understood the [location] would create a problem. Trash has definitely been a problem, dust has been a problem.”

Supervisors told Bill Smith, the sanitation district’s general manager, that the area must be landscaped immediately to obscure the mountains of garbage. Smith also agreed to shut down the facility during periods of strong easterly winds, which would reduce the amount of dust, garbage and odor that routinely waft to nearby residential and farming areas.

Supervisors also decided that sanitation officials do not have the authority to dismiss recommendations by consultants who monitor the dump. Only county officials have the power to block such recommendations, supervisors said.

“Our issues are finally beginning to be addressed,” Gordon Kimball, who owns a 100-acre avocado orchard half a mile from the dump, said after the meeting. “We’re slowly moving closer to a true land-use compatibility, and it’s not just the landfill doing what it wants.”