Farmers Haul Toland Dump Concerns Before Board

Complaining about everything from destructive plumes of dust to messy flocks of ravens to unsightly litter, a group of farmers implored Ventura County supervisors Tuesday to do more to control environmental problems at the Toland Road Landfill or shut it down.

“It’s been three years and as you can see, we’re still here,” said Mike Shore, who grows avocados near the landfill, situated between Fillmore and Santa Paula.

In the weeks before May 22, 1996--the day supervisors OKd a tenfold increase in garbage at the dump--Shore spoke out against the idea.

Then, Shore and about 100 others living near the landfill repeatedly voiced concerns about windblown garbage carried into their neighborhoods. They worried about dust from trucks destroying crops and leaving a film over cars and homes. They predicted scavenging birds would flock around their neighborhoods, leaving messes.

“Our worst fears have been realized,” Shore said Tuesday.

Supervisors listened to more than a dozen protesters, but postponed voting on whether to require improved operating conditions at the landfill until Supervisor John Flynn--who was ill and did not attend the hearing--could be present. The three-week delay was at the request of the Ventura Regional Sanitation District, which owns the dump.

“Many of our customers live in his district,” said Mark Zirbel, an Oxnard attorney representing the sanitation district.

Zirbel vehemently defended practices at the landfill.

He also objected to a county staff recommendation that the district spend $100,000 more a year on inspections and monitoring at the 29-year-old facility.

The district now spends $50,000 annually for monitoring.

“Our permit compliance and operations at Toland can be characterized as good to excellent,” Zirbel said.

To control the dust, for instance, Zirbel said the district has paved some of the roads at the site, frequently watered down the unpaved roads and mandates trucks travel at low speed.

But a slide show by county staff members presented a different picture.

The slides, taken by inspectors who visited the dump 189 times between September and March, showed trucks charging up landfill roads followed by long trails of dust.

Mostly, the unpaved roads had not been watered to reduce the dust. County employees said inspectors found an unacceptable amount of dust at the site during 13 inspections, or about 7% of the time.

“Admittedly, sometimes the water trucks are not operating fast enough,” Zirbel later said, presenting his own slide that he said showed the dump on a typical day.

That slide showed a few trucks moving around a dustless, bird-less mound of garbage.

“I’m sorry ladies and gentleman, but on any given day, this is it,” Zirbel said. “And if you’ll notice, no birds and no dust.”

The district controls the birds, he said, by shooting off cannons and pistols to shoo them. Also, the district closed the dump for four days in February during high winds, though only after a neighbor complained of an abundance of litter, he said.

Supervisors Kathy Long and Judy Mikels asked that county planners establish dust-measuring guidelines. Inspectors can now only estimate what constitutes too much dust.

“I don’t feel comfortable with, ‘Gosh, it looks dusty,’ ” Mikels said. “I’m one of those people who needs a yardstick.”

Agricultural Commissioner Earl McPhail said a crucial concern of farmers is the dust accumulation on crops. The dust, he said, destroys the tiny predators that growers use to kill insects. When this occurs, farmers must resort to using pesticides.

“There is more dust on the leaves out there and it has to come from somewhere,” McPhail said. “We think it’s coming from the landfill.”

Santa Paula farmer Gordon Kimball, who owns 100 acres of avocados near the dump, complained about the dust problem.

“I’d like to give you a farmer’s perspective on dust,” he told supervisors. “It means I spend $54,000 more on pesticides per year spraying my crops.”