Flynn, Oxnard’s Lopez Urge Closure of Dump

Ventura County Supervisor John K. Flynn Wednesday joined Oxnard’s mayor-elect in calling for the closure of the Bailard Landfill by the end of next year and threw his support behind the city’s efforts to build a large trash recycling plant to serve the west county.

Against the backdrop of the 30-year-old landfill, Flynn and Oxnard Mayor-elect Manuel Lopez held a news conference where they accused the dump’s operator, Ventura Regional Sanitation District, of stalling the closure and failing to adequately prepare to shut down the facility when its permit expires in December, 1993.

The two officials said they will pressure the sanitation district to immediately begin planning for the end of Bailard and to ensure that financing is in place to close the landfill.

“We in the city of Oxnard are saying we’ve taken the trash long enough,” said Flynn, who said he will soon propose that the Board of Supervisors officially support the closure of Bailard. “It’s time to share that burden.”

Clint Whitney, general manager of the sanitation district, said a financed plan is in place to close the landfill, but noted that he hopes not to put it into action.

The district has requested to keep the landfill open until as late as May, 1997, to allow it to reach its permitted capacity. That request probably won’t reach supervisors until next summer, Whitney said.

“We are dead serious about extending it and we are not even considering closing it unless we are forced to do so,” Whitney said of Bailard. “If John Flynn is doing this, he is acting on the basis of no factual information. It is a pure political act playing to his constituency and he is going off half-cocked as usual.”

Bailard accepts nearly all west county trash and nearly half of the 3,000 tons produced each day in the county.

Until recently, the Oxnard City Council supported extending the life of the landfill until another dump site could be found. But the council reversed itself a few months ago and voted to support the closure, after agreeing to move forward with plans to build a $20-million recycling and waste-transfer station in southeast Oxnard.

The plant will recycle county wastes and sort refuse for transfer to a landfill, and Lopez said he hopes that the facility is up and running by the time Bailard closes.

The recycling plant “is key to our future in solving our waste problems,” he said.

And in what represents a turnabout for the 5th District supervisor, who this summer called for his home city to abandon its plans for a trash recycling station and join with the county and other cities to build just one west county plant, Flynn said he now supports Oxnard’s effort to build the facility as soon as possible.

“I applaud the city of Oxnard for taking that great leap,” Flynn said. “I think that was a good step and it brought people together and made them take notice.”

The county still intends to pursue construction of a separate recycling station, but Flynn and Lopez agreed that there is enough trash in the west county to support more than one.

Lopez said Oxnard, which has a newly elected council being installed next week, and the county are putting aside past differences.

“We see a new era in which the county and the city will work together to solve this very critical issue,” Lopez said.

Whitney of the sanitation district said he is glad that Flynn has finally supported Oxnard’s recycling plant, and is pleased that the county and the city are working to solve local trash problems, but said the 1993 closure of Bailard would do more harm than good.

He said a premature closure could increase trash rates by 25% in Oxnard, and that the district could lose as much as $16 million in tipping fees that could be used to clean up old dump sites.

In the end, Whitney said Bailard will be needed because Oxnard’s recycling plant won’t be ready by the end of next year. If Bailard closes when its permit expires, he said, the west county will be without a place to dump its garbage.

“We have broad support for the extension of Bailard,” Whitney said. “There will be no other place to put the garbage and the district would be irresponsible if it did not ask for an extension.”