Moorpark Leaders Fear Influx of Garbage Trucks

Moorpark Councilman Scott Montgomery is fearful that Ventura County may have a special Christmas present waiting for his city in December, 1993: thousands of garbage trucks rolling through its streets each day on the way to the Simi Valley Landfill.

By then, Montgomery says, Simi Valley may have the county’s only operational dump if the proposed Weldon Canyon landfill is not approved and the scheduled Dec. 7, 1993, closure of the Bailard Landfill in Oxnard is not extended.

That combination would bring about 7,000 new truck trips per day to Moorpark, the councilman says, causing an environmental, economic, traffic and safety nightmare in his city of 26,000 residents.

At Montgomery’s request, the Moorpark City Council tonight will discuss how best to lobby the county into timely action on approving the Weldon Canyon project or extending the Bailard Landfill until another west county site can be found.

“We will do everything legal and illegal to make sure that those trucks don’t come,” Montgomery said. “At a minimum, they will be the best inspected trucks in the nation.”

And if the issue began with Montgomery, who is running for his second term on the council, it has been joined by other council members who share his concerns and frustration with the county over a perceived foot-dragging that could leave Moorpark the victim.

“The concern that I have is that the Board of Supervisors is not going to take any action on Weldon Canyon, Bailard will be closed, things will start to happen and Moorpark’s going to be stuck in the middle with all the garbage trucks,” Councilman John Wozniak said. “That’s unacceptable.”

Councilman Roy Talley agreed. “The fact that the Board of Supervisors has played around with a western waste site is really disappointing,” Talley said. “We just want them to come up with something. Because the way it looks right now, we’re going to have trucks.”

The Ventura County Regional Sanitation District, which operates Bailard Landfill, is reviewing environmental impacts of extending the landfill’s life as far as 1997.

First discussed as a potential landfill nearly 20 years ago, Weldon Canyon received notoriety in 1985 when a study of potential county dumps named it the most promising site. Since then, two draft environmental impact reports for the project have been completed and rejected by the Board of Supervisors as inadequate. A third impact report is being drafted and is expected to be released for public review next month. The Board of Supervisors could again have the matter before it by April.

Throughout its history, environmental groups have attacked the Weldon Canyon proposal. The Ojai-based Environmental Coalition has led the fight and continues to be a vocal critic. Lawsuits have been threatened privately against the county on environmental grounds if the landfill is approved.

Because of the potential legal challenge, Supervisor Vicky Howard said the county has been carefully making sure that it has fulfilled every possible aspect of environmental review in an attempt to ward off a lengthy court battle.

“There are definite reasons why you take all due precaution to make sure that you have met every legal and environmental concern,” Howard said. “If you move too rapidly . . . you may end up delaying the process that much more in the long run because you have to go to court.”

Howard said that other options, including trains hauling the county’s trash to Utah and using the Chiquita Landfill in Los Angeles County, could prevent the sole use of the Simi Valley Landfill if the Weldon Canyon proposal is not approved and the Bailard Landfill is not extended.

But Montgomery said those options are not realistic. He said the county has been too busy trying to ward off an environmental challenge to the Weldon Canyon proposal to consider the potential harm of delaying approval of the site.

“It’s a bunch of manure; they’ve been dragging their feet,” Montgomery said of the supervisors.

“It’s time Vicky Howard became a proponent of siting a facility in the west county,” he said. “I wish we were getting the support out of Vicky that we have a right to get.”

For her part, Howard dismissed the comments as campaign rhetoric and said she is as attuned to the needs of Moorpark as Montgomery is.

“I feel as strongly as Scott does, that I don’t want to see trucks coming through Moorpark,” Howard said.

“I represent them, I care about them, and I am going to do everything in my power to make sure that they are not adversely impacted in any way. I represent them as much as Scott does, and I think the two of us ought to be working on this together, rather than one saying the other is not doing the job.”