Dispute Over Toland Landfill Is Not Buried

The trash talking continues between opponents and proponents of Toland Road Landfill, a year after the facility began accepting a tenfold increase in garbage.

The dump’s neighbors say their fears of blowing trash, increased truck traffic and more sea gulls and crows have come true, while grudgingly admitting those problems have diminished in recent months.

Officials with the Ventura Regional Sanitation District, which operates the landfill, counter that the agency is in compliance with its permit conditions and responds promptly to infrequent complaints--made mostly by parties to a lawsuit aimed at closing the dump.

“You should probably take complaints from people in the middle of a lawsuit with a grain of salt,” said Mark Zirbel, the sanitation district’s lawyer. “Our largest land-owning neighbors on all four sides of us have signed declarations that state we’re not causing them any problems with dust or litter or traffic.”

Next week the district will begin depositing trash on a newly expanded section of the 80-acre landfill site, said John Conaway, the district’s director of solid waste.

The $3-million expansion will allow garbage to be piled into a 100-foot-high and 600-foot-long section of the dump over the next year, Conaway said.

Opponents remain as critical of the landfill as they were before Aug. 26, 1996, when the dump began receiving 1,300 tons of trash daily from western Ventura County.

“Pretty much what was predicted and what VRSD [sanitation district] pooh-poohed has come to pass,” said Robert Sawyer, a land-use attorney and member of Ventura County Citizens to Stop Toland Landfill.

“Problems have popped up as predicted. . . . VRSD has worked to mitigate some of them; others they haven’t.”

A second six-month review of the landfill’s operations is scheduled for Sept. 16 before the county Board of Supervisors.

Meanwhile, the legal assault on the landfill, midway between Fillmore and Santa Paula and touted as the answer to Ventura County’s trash-disposal problem for the next 30 years, continues on several fronts.

Lawyers representing the two Santa Clara Valley cities will argue Sept. 9 before the Court of Appeal in Ventura that a judge incorrectly rejected an injunction last August to halt the expansion.

A final hearing on a separate lawsuit filed by the communities, the opposition group and the Santa Clara Elementary School District is not expected to occur until next year.

The district has had to stop holding occasional classes on the lawn of its historic Little Red Schoolhouse at Toland Road and California 126 because of the increased truck noise.

Opponents have also appealed a June decision by the State Water Resources Board that upheld the elimination of restrictions on landfill operations because it found no compelling evidence of an active fault on the site.

Finally, the owners of a ranch west of the landfill filed a lawsuit June 17 alleging dust has caused $134,000 in crop damage.

Unlike the white clouds of gulls that were a familiar sight to motorists driving past Toland’s predecessor, Oxnard’s Bailard Landfill, few birds were in evidence Friday.

But opponents say the windshield of at least one airplane was smashed in a March 7 collision with a sea gull at nearby Santa Paula Airport. And citrus growers say they watch dozens of crows fly from the landfill to roost in their orchards, where the birds ruin fruit with their droppings.

A bird study is underway, but district officials deny the landfill’s small resident population of 20 ravens and sea gulls is responsible for the damages.

“We don’t have crows, we have ravens,” site supervisor Ken Ball said. “The bird people tell me they’re all ravens and they’re not orchard raiders.”

Opponents say response is typical of district officials, who, they contend, only solve problems when forced.

“You make a complaint and the first thing they do is deny it and then you’ve got to start showing your proof,” said Larry Diamond, the dump’s closest resident. “They deny it until we stomp our feet loudly.”

Critics say they will continue to watch the landfill’s operations intently.

“I think it’s clear our actions have held them to a higher standard than what the county would have held them to in terms of litter control, dust control and geology,” grower Gordon Kimball said. “I don’t see any of us going away until that landfill does, one way or another.”