Dumping at Bailard Could Be Extended, Report Says : Environment: Officials seeking to keep the landfill open laud the statement. Oxnard leaders disagree.

An environmental impact report issued Monday says that dumping at Bailard Landfill could be extended 3 1/2 years past its Dec. 7 closing date with no more harm to the environment than the traffic, dust, noise, sea gulls and faint traces of carcinogenic runoff the landfill already causes.

Regional waste officials said the EIR backs their efforts to keep the county’s main landfill open until a replacement is approved--or until they can finish raising $21 million needed to close Bailard.

The EIR “says in a nutshell that there is no environmental reason not to extend Bailard,” said Donald Gunderson, board chairman of the Ventura Regional Sanitation District, which runs Bailard and commissioned the $1.2-million report.

More than 7,100 water tests last fall showed that only three of the landfill’s 33 monitoring wells contained higher-than-acceptable traces of vinyl chloride. The cancer-causing chemical, a byproduct of decaying garbage, was found in amounts of 3.2 parts per billion in those wells, slightly more than the 2 parts per billion allowed by law, said Clint Whitney, general manager of the sanitation district.

“That’s the equivalent of a shot glass full of vinyl chloride in a swimming pool that’s 300 feet by 300 feet by 10 feet deep,” Whitney said of runoff from the landfill, which lies on unincorporated land between Ventura and Oxnard, west of Victoria Avenue and south of Olivas Park Drive.

The sanitation district has raised $15 million but could need $6 million more to close Bailard because of the cost of complying with new state regulations, Whitney said.

County officials are considering a proposal by Waste Management Inc. to open a new landfill in Weldon Canyon between Ventura and Ojai, a process that could take up to two years, Whitney said.

Oxnard officials reached Monday disagreed vehemently with the Bailard extension plan, saying the county Board of Supervisors should vote against it and close the landfill on time.

“We’ve put up with it long enough,” Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez said of the 100-foot-tall landfill, which would reach 119 feet in height if it runs until 1997. “Would you like to have that next to you? It’s an unsightly project.”

Lopez and Oxnard Councilman Andres Herrera said that if the landfill is kept open, it should be only until another landfill is operating or a transfer station is built to take the county’s trash elsewhere.

“Oxnard has been, for too long, the dumping ground for the western waste shed,” said Herrera, Oxnard’s representative on the sanitation district board.

County Supervisor John K. Flynn, who represents Oxnard, said the landfill should close for good on Dec. 7, whether or not a new facility is open.

The fact that Bailard has room for more trash allows county officials to put off solving trash problems, including state mandates to cut landfill use through recycling by 25% by 1995 and by 50% by 2000, Flynn said.

“In my opinion, we’re not going to find any solution as long as we continue to keep Bailard open, because the pressure is removed,” he said.

Flynn said that other cities do not care about the landfill’s negative effect on neighboring Oxnard communities.

“They don’t care whether Bailard has any impact on the water,” Flynn said. “They don’t care about sea gulls pooping all over River Ridge and dropping pork chop bones on River Ridge homes. They don’t care about the odor that comes through River Ridge.”

Ventura Councilman Gary Tuttle said that Venturans also complain about the smell and about traffic congestion at Victoria Avenue and the Ventura Freeway caused by Bailard-bound trash trucks.

Yet despite the complaints, he said, the landfill should be kept open until the district raises enough money through dumping fees to close and cover it properly.

“I think that economics calls for it to be extended so we can pay the bills of closing it,” Tuttle said. “We don’t have any alternatives other than Bailard at this point.”

Supervisor Maggie Kildee agreed. “We need to close it as soon as possible, but by the same token, we need to keep it open until we’ve established another landfill. . . . I don’t see Bailard as a pacifier, but I think the concern is that we not do something so precipitous that we make a decision that’s not a good one.”

NEXT STEP

The Ventura Regional Sanitation District board, representing Ventura County and all cities but Moorpark and Simi Valley, is scheduled to vote Feb. 18 on whether it should accept the EIR and recommend that Bailard Landfill stay open until May, 1997. The county Planning Department then would review comments on the plan from county health and safety departments and make a recommendation to the Planning Commission, which would forward its recommendation to the Board of Supervisors for a vote. The district also would have to gain permission from the Regional Water Quality Board to keep Bailard open.