City, County Feud Over Site for Hazardous Waste Facility

Strained relations between leaders of county government and the city of Ventura have become even more tense, this time over the county’s plan to put a hazardous materials storage facility next to the city’s largest water treatment plant.

Ventura officials say the proposed drop-off site for used paint, motor oil, batteries and antifreeze poses a significant contamination risk to the city’s water supply and should not go forward. But county officials contend that the threat is minimal and that an upcoming safety study will prove the Ventura Avenue location is the best site for the storage facility.

Ventura city officials and the county Public Works Agency have been fighting for nearly two years over the location of the drop-off site.

Both governments await the results of a risk-assessment study, expected in mid-July, that county officials believe will prove the materials will not risk public health if stored temporarily at the former county fire station building at 5777 N. Ventura Ave.

Ventura city officials, however, say the county’s plan not only defies common sense--because there are two other eligible sites a few miles away--but is also grounds for a lawsuit.

The county’s own General Plan prohibits locating a hazardous materials site in such close proximity to a drinking-water supply, Assistant City Atty. Jim Neuerburg said.

Ventura City Councilman Jim Friedman said he has threatened to chain himself to the North Ventura Avenue building to protest “how idiotic it would be to put a facility that accepts household poisons . . . 100 feet downwind” from the open tanks of water.

“It’s like deciding to build a match factory 100 feet from a fireworks factory,” he said.

The new drop-off station would be the seventh in the county and would serve 80,000 people in west Ventura, Ojai and the nearby unincorporated areas, officials said.

The proposed site is next door to the Avenue Water Treatment plant, the largest of three such facilities in Ventura that supply drinking water to 100,000 people, including residents in the unincorporated areas north of the city, interim treatment plant Supervisor Mike Oakley said.

The dispute is the latest feud between Ventura city and county officials.

Earlier this month, the Ventura City Council drew the ire of supervisors by voting to withhold $572,000 in annual sales taxes that normally support the county’s budget. County attorneys are considering legal action against the city over the sales tax dispute.

Supervisor Frank Schillo said the county is willing to negotiate on the storage site “and that’s more than [the Ventura City Council] did with us on the sales tax.”

Supervisor John Flynn said the property next to the water treatment plant “doesn’t seem like a logical” location for the storage facility. But the latest battle is evidence that Ventura City Manager Donna Landeros “just wants to fight on every issue,” Flynn said.

Landeros said she is putting the safety of the city’s residents first.

“If we’re guilty of protecting our future water supply, then so be it,” Landeros said. “That’s a criticism I don’t mind taking.”

Although a filter system at the water treatment plant detects contamination before it hits the drinking supply, the water basins are uncovered and materials easily could be tossed into them, Oakley said.

Kay Martin, deputy director of the county’s Public Works Agency, dismissed claims that a storage facility next door to the treatment plant would increase the risk of contamination.

She said the county’s planning department approved a permit for the site, therefore it does not violate the county’s General Plan as the assistant cityattorney alleged.

“There was never any real data or substantiation to any of the claims the city made about the potential for damage to their water treatment plant,” Martin said.

Ventura officials favor a site farther south at Shell Road and Ventura Avenue on private property that is being considered for an industrial park. A second possible location, the city contends, is E.J. Harrison & Sons Recycling in unincorporated Saticoy on Ventura’s east end.

But Martin said acquiring the Shell Road property “would be like starting from square one,” because the county doesn’t own the land and doesn’t have any of the proper permits for it. The second site also needs county permits to accept household waste.

Besides, Martin said, all 10 county cities, including Ventura, approved the use of former county fire stations as hazardous materials sites when they approved the county’s Hazardous Waste Management Plan in 1986.

Waste accepted at the proposed new site would be stored for up to four months before being transferred to recycling facilities in Los Angeles County and Northern California, officials said.

Although Ventura is already home to a privately owned hazardous waste storage facility, the Gold Coast Recycling Center on the city’s south end, that site is too far for Ojai residents to drive, officials said.

“Many studies have shown that people will not go more than 10 to 15 miles outside the radius of their home to dispose of these materials,” county Solid Waste Division Manager Norma Camacho said.

The county had been bound since December by an agreement with the city to find an alternative location, but that pact expired last month. Martin said she is frustrated that many people seem ready to dismiss the possibility that the safety risk is slim.

“We have a scientific, technical reality to this issue and then we have a political reality to this issue,” Martin said. “Up to this point, we’ve been dealing with only the political reality.”

Friedman said he would consider a compromise only if the county agreed to accept legal responsibility for contamination of the city’s drinking water.

“The bottom line is poison and water don’t mix,” he said. “It’s as simple as that.”