Toland Seeks Increase in Trash From Carpinteria

Adding a major new element to the controversy surrounding the Toland Road Landfill, the dump’s owners are requesting permission to increase the amount of trash they accept from a Santa Barbara County community.

Currently, the 160-acre landfill between Santa Paula and Fillmore is allowed to receive 15 tons per day from Carpinteria. But the Ventura County Sanitation District, which owns the dump, recently told members of the county’s planning department that the tonnage listed on the dump’s permit for Carpinteria was unrealistically low and a clerical mistake.

The dump’s owners say they now want to accept an unlimited amount of trash.

Residents responded swiftly--and angrily.

“It was no typo,” said farmer Gordan Kimball, a vociferous Toland landfill opponent.

He said he attended the May 22, 1996, meeting where supervisors approved a tenfold increase in garbage at the landfill.

“It wasn’t a misunderstanding. Their [the owners’] representative said 15 to 20 tons. And supervisors agreed to 15 tons,” he said.

Kimball and several other neighbors said the landfill planned all along to increase the trash intake from Carpinteria, in effect making Ventura County a dumping ground for Santa Barbara County.

“Ventura County has gone through the pain and the suffering and the environmental risk to expand that landfill to serve this county for years to come,” said Kimball, who owns 100 acres of avocados near the dump. “Now, they’re giving it away to a county that doesn’t want to take care of its own trash.”

Under its permits, Toland Road Landfill may not accept trash from a city outside Ventura County other than Carpinteria. The beach town, which has a population of 14,500, was already using the landfill when the 30-year permit was issued nearly three years ago, and therefore an exception was made.

Supervisor Kathy Long said this week that there is evidence that the dump may be accepting trash from other areas outside Ventura County.

Long grew concerned after reading a recent Toland landfill report showing that the dump received 1,025 tons of garbage from areas in Santa Barbara County outside Carpinteria.

Landfill officials said that report--written by Harrison Industries, which hauls the trash from Santa Barbara County to Toland--was incorrect.

In an interview Wednesday, officials vehemently denied accepting trash from areas in Santa Barbara County outside Carpinteria.

“That isn’t happening,” said Bill Smith, general manager of the sanitation district, a quasi-public agency with a board of directors made up of elected officials.

The district is expected to earn a profit on its operations, receiving $18 per ton of trash. The landfill can accept 1,500 tons per day.

“We give the county all of our records,” Smith said. “We don’t hide anything.”

Smith said Carpinteria’s trash represents only about 3% of the total amount shipped to the landfill each day. The dump, he said, receives no more than 60 tons each day from the city.

“It’s a drop in the bucket,” Smith said. “It’s a small city and it’s a very small percentage of what Toland brings in.”

Smith said the sanitation district didn’t ask for Carpinteria’s trash. “We were asked to take it. . . . This makes us look like we’re the bad guys. It makes us look like we’re going into Santa Barbara County and taking all of their trash. It isn’t the case.”

But Long expressed skepticism Wednesday that the Harrison report was inaccurate. She has directed officials at the county’s Solid Waste Management Department to look into the landfill’s trash tracking method.

Kimball and other neighbors are also upset that Toland will fill up faster as a result of out-of-county trash.

“Every ton of trash that goes into the Toland landfill from Carpinteria means one less ton of our trash,” he said.

The meeting at which the sanitation district’s request was filed took place 10 days ago. Planning Director Keith Turner deferred a decision until planning commissioners can consider the proposal, which will be within two months.

“There are a number of people concerned about this,” Turner said. “They want at least some number placed on the tonnage limit.”