TOLAND LANDFILL EXPANSION APPROVED : NARROW VOTE BY VENTURA COUNTY SUPERVISORS ENDS PROLONGED HEARING.

Byline: Kermit Pattison Daily News Staff Writer

Despite vehement protests from farmers, a major expansion of the Toland Road Landfill narrowly won approval Wednesday from the Ventura County Board of Supervisors.

After a public hearing stretching nearly 10 hours over two days, the supervisors voted 3-2 to allow an expansion of the daily trash intake by more than tenfold over the next 31 years at the landfill between Santa Paula and Fillmore.

``We need to take care of our own waste in the county,'' said Supervisor John Flynn. ``We generate the waste, we should take care of it.''

The decision followed two days of exhaustive testimony that pitted trash officials against Santa Clara River Valley farmers who feared that the expanded dump would harm crops with dust, pollution and traffic. The hearing drew more than 250 people and one person in the audience fainted near the close of the meeting Wednesday.

Supervisors Susan Lacey, John Flynn and Frank Schillo voted in favor of the expansion while Supervisors Judy Mikels and Maggie Kildee opposed it. The approval overturned the Ventura County Planning Commission's recommendation two

weeks ago to reject the expansion of the landfill.

``This extension meets everything you would need to have a landfill,'' said Supervisor Susan Lacey. ``And it's already there.''

The approval puts the Ventura Regional Sanitation District one step closer to turning Toland Road into the main trash bin for western Ventura County after the closure of the Bailard Landfill in Oxnard this summer. The expansion still must win permits from the California Integrated Waste Management Board and the Regional Water Quality Control Board.

The sanitation district - a public agency - hopes to expand the landfill's capacity from the current 135 tons per day to 1,500 tons per day. The expansion would boost the lifetime capacity of the landfill from 2.5 million tons to 15 million tons over 31 years.

``The county, after two decades of effort, finally resolved the solid waste disposal issue for western Ventura County with a solution that is both environmentally sound and economic,'' said Mark Zirbel, an attorney for the VRSD.

Even as the board modified the landfill's conditional use permit to allow the expansion, the supervisors added a few last-minute conditions, such as insisting that the landfill not import additional trash from outside the county, take additional steps to prevent ground water contamination and monitor the impact of dust and traffic on nearby farms.

Kildee and Mikels opposed the expansion, calling it a blow to the county's farm industry and a financially risky undertaking that may prove obsolete as recycling efforts improve.

``We need to begin taking agriculture very seriously,'' Kildee said. ``We're getting very close to the edge of saying we no longer want to be an agricultural county. That Santa Clara Valley is an absolute jewel.''

Kildee and Mikels also called the move a betrayal of Fillmore and Santa Paula, which have lived with the landfill for 26 years with the assumption that it would take only local trash.

``It's definitely unwanted out there,'' Mikels said. ``It's unnecessary. It's one more time when we're chipping away not only at agriculture . . . but we're chipping away at that confidence level again with the electorate.''

Robert Sawyer, an attorney for Ventura County Citizens to Stop the Toland Landfill, said opponents would continue fighting the project in three lawsuits pending in court.

``It's still out there,'' he said. ``VRSD is not over the hump by any means.''

Sawyer said opponents would seek an injunction to halt the expansion until the court rules on the legal challenges to the environmental impact report. He said the report was flawed in areas like geology, traffic and water.

``If the decision maker is relying on a flawed EIR, then the decision shouldn't be valid,'' Sawyer said.