Tonnage Hike OKd for Toland Dump

In a split vote Tuesday, supervisors voted to increase by 50 tons a day the amount of waste from Carpinteria dumped in the Toland landfill.

In doing so, they overturned a county Planning Commission decision not to grant the increase. The supervisors’ move defeats a years-long effort by nearby avocado farmers to slow the dump’s expansion.

The board voted 3 to 2 to modify the landfill’s conditional use permit to increase from 15 tons to 65 tons per day the amount of trash accepted from the Santa Barbara County beach town.

Supervisors John Flynn and Kathy Long, whose district includes the landfill area near Santa Paula, opposed the change.

The vote came after officials with the Ventura Regional Sanitation District appealed a decision last August by the Planning Commission to reject an increase at the dump.

The trash from Carpinteria “represents 3% of the total” transferred to the Toland landfill, said district manager Bill Smith.

“It’s really a very minor amount of trash,” he said.

For avocado farmer Gordon Kimball, however, more Santa Barbara County waste at the dump near his groves means more dust on his trees, which means unhealthy and less-productive trees.

Kimball, who owns a 100-acre farm, was among a group of farmers who sued in 1996 to protest the county’s findings that the dump would not hurt surrounding farmland.

District officials wanted an increase because they said the tonnage listed on the dump’s permit was a clerical mistake and instead of reading 50 tons, the permit read 15 tons, Toland officials say.