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Letter to the Editor - May 26, 2008

One day in the near future, one might view the website of Simi Valley and read that we are not only the home of the prestigious Ronald Reagan Library and the nuclear meltdown worse than Three Mile Island (1), but also the largest landfill in the County of Ventura. 

What a spectacular view when touring the Library and Air Force One... the largest landfill around.


Retired Air Force One which carried President Reagan
to Iceland, where he met with Gorbachev...
Maybe Simi Valley residents should be using this rallying point to say,
"TEAR DOWN THAT LANDFILL!"

The more I looked into this landfill expansion topic, the more confused I became.  I’ve since asked several long-time residents --- some who have lived here for twenty years or more --- if they were aware that the application had been put forth for this to occur and every one of them were extremely shocked and as perplexed as I am!

The original five-year agreement with Waste Management was made in 1999, but in 2002, it was extended under former Simi Valley Mayor, Bill Davis to the year 2034 (the same gentleman hired by Waste Management as a consultant in December, 2006) (2). 

In April of 2007, Waste Management presented an application to the City Council to expand the landfill by 185 acres to 371 acres for waste disposal – doubling the current 3,000 TPD (tons per day) to 6,000 TPD – and according to one news article, increase the height of the landfill by fifteen stories! (3)

If this application is approved by the City Council, Simi Valley will be home to the largest landfill in the County.    There is one other landfill currently operating in Ventura County. (4)  Toland Landfill, located in Santa Paula, which is 214 acres, 86 of which are for waste disposal and permitted currently at 1,500 TPD (tons per day) - Simi Landfill has 298 acres, 185 permitted for waste disposal. 

In 1996, Toland Landfill was approved to go from 35 TPD to 1,500 TPD -- extending its lifetime capacity to 15 MILLION tons over 31 years, ending its usefulness in the year 2027. (5)  The Ventura Regional Sanitation District, a public enterprise agency that was once supported by tax dollars, but is now supporting itself on fees, manages the Toland Landfill. (6)  Waste Management of Houston, Texas, owns Simi Valley Landfill.

The more I thought about all of this, the more it did not make sense to me.  I’m just an everyday citizen who thinks about things in a pretty basic way.  So, follow me for a moment:

If we’re only the third largest city in the county, why are we going to end up with the largest landfill, especially with the cost of gasoline per gallon currently spiraling out of control?

It makes no logical sense to me to be trucking all that trash here to Simi Valley.  So I began to research the populations of the cities, feeling that economically it would make more sense to have the landfills closer to the largest sources of trash.  Oxnard is the largest city (population-wise), followed by Thousand Oaks and then us in Simi Valley.

Trying to follow the ‘trails of trash and trash trucks’ in our county is extremely confusing – is it intended to be so that average citizens can’t understand the process and therefore object to the application presented to the county?

From all the sources I could find, this is what I discovered:

  • The Toland Landfill services the cities of Camarillo, Fillmore, Ojai, Oxnard, Port Hueneme, San Buenaventure, Santa Paula and Thousand Oaks (6) --  or approximately 440,000 (56%) of the 788,566 Ventura County residents.  The Del Norte Regional Recycling and Transfer Station and Gold Coast Recycling and Transfer Station feed their trash into the Toland Landfill incidentally, making up for another 16% of our population.  In total, that’s about 72% of this county’s population.
     

  • The Simi Valley Landfill services the cities of Agoura Hills, Calabasas, Hidden Hills, Lake Sherwood, Lynn Ranch, Malibu, Moorpark, Oak Park, Simi Valley, Susana Knolls, some sections of Thousand Oaks, and Westlake Village – which represents about 28% of our county’s population.  It's been in business for over 30 years (7) and in 2003, with 186 acres, it has just reached 50% capacity. (8)

So why, if our local landfill is already double the size of the Toland Landfill while only handling 1/3 of the population, must it be tripled in acreage and doubled in daily allotment of trash?  It just doesn’t make any sense when you look at the numbers!

And these are the two active landfills – there are many other sites that have been closed down and listed as inactive.  But buried or not, that trash is still there - such as the Tierra Rejada Landfill, etc.! (9)  Older landfills are not lined, nor is there much attention paid to them, but the harmful factors to our environment and quality of life continues to go on, covered and hidden or not. 

The largest city in Ventura County (Oxnard) has still not gone to the three-receptacle recycling system we have here in Simi Valley, but they are recycling 62% already and plan on doing more, so at least that’s a start to solving some of our problems here in Ventura County!

According to the EPA's report in 2006, the total amount of wastes going into landfills is dropping as we are improving in our recycling efforts daily - from 142.3 million tons in 1999 to 138.2 million tons in 2006.  And the net per capita discard rate (after recycling, composting and combustion for energy recovery) is now 2.53 pounds per person per day nationwide.  Furthermore, in 1960 only 6.4% MSW (municipal solid waste) was recycled and in 2006, it is 81.8%.  In this same year (2006), Americans recovered 61 million tons through recycling, which is 2.4 million tons more than in 2005!  And with these recycling efforts (with the passion now to 'go green', this number SHOULD decrease), in 2006 it was 2.53 pounds per person per day. (10)

Can someone explain to me, as an average citizen, the need to push to get this application approved now, when the permit doesn’t expire for another 26 years?   And the current structure in place will service our County until 2024 without any expansion, sixteen years from now? 

Does it have anything to do with the 2,800 acres that Waste Management purchased from Unocal Land in October, 2004 after the city rejected Unocal’s plan in 2003 for 1,370 homes and more than 450 acres of commercial development because the proposal violated the city's hillside building restrictions?  This, information was supplied by Brian Kelly, Vice-President of the Unocal Land and Development Co. (11)

By the way, Simi’s Municipal Code restricts commercial development on slopes greater than 10% and residential building on slopes greater than 20% - I would have thought prior to buying that much land and planning that many homes, reading the Municipal Code would have been on the top of the agenda!  Then again, I really love the dog park and school that were promised when we all accepted the huge building of Big Sky – and neither one has materialized!

Quite frankly, I just don’t want to live less than two miles “as the crow flies” from the largest landfill in Ventura County when our community represents only 16% of the County’s population!

And speaking of crows, as a transplanted Simi Valley-ite, one of the things that I noticed within the first few months of my arrival here was the huge population of crows and sea gulls in our city.  The crows were particularly noticeable.  You couldn’t help but be aware of them as they destroyed your property, having learned how to open the G.I. Rubbish containers and disperse the trash all over the street.

Not only are they intelligent birds, but are in fact, brazen in their behavior!  In the past ten years, I have watched as crows exterminate the songbirds that used to dwell in our hedge, raiding their nests and carrying off live, young baby birds.   I have looked up into the skylight in my kitchen early in the morning to see crows peering down at me while attempting to tear open the screen with their powerful beaks and incessant pecking.  My neighbors and I have had numerous vehicles damaged by these same crows! 

During my research on this landfill issue, I discovered you can’t have a landfill without a bird problem (10) and crows in particular, since they are scavengers (13) – hence the crow population that has overrun Simi Valley!  And we want to double the Simi Valley Landfill - HUH?  What's wrong with this picture?

I’m sure that the residents of Big Sky with their homes in the $700,000+ range appreciate being less than three miles from the landfill… that must REALLY help their land values, as these have decreased by over 20% all over Simi Valley since the beginning of the year.  Hope they have crow insurance protection, for it is not in our home owners policy!

Then I thought, maybe this is all a matter of perspective.  Maybe folks in Simi Valley just don’t realize how big the landfill already is, or just how close it is to homes? (14) The Toland Landfill is located between Fillmore and Santa Paula (which is about 10 miles apart).  But I personally live less than 3 miles via streets from this landfill, and there are other homes that are even closer to the site!  Look on any map and you’ll see that there isn’t much difference in size between Moorpark College and our current landfill, but someone wants to EXPAND IT for profit and greed?

Sad, huh?

The Waste Management website acknowledges that we are already importing Los Angeles’ trash – the Toland Landfill is also taking Los Angeles’ sludge. (15, 16) According to news stories and other sources, Waste Management’s current goals lists Los Angeles as one of the five major markets that they want to expand during the next few years to increase their profits! (17)  And I'm not even getting into the issues of Waste Management's criminal convictions (some for bribery of public officials), alleged organized crime ties and 52 million paid in fines and penalties (3)... that's just another whole ball of 'trash' that bears respect in this issue, might be connected, but I've not (yet) researched beyond the news story... but as a citizen, I'd like to know why we as a city are doing business with a company like this, when we boast about being the 'Safest City in America' according to the FBI!  Something about that picture doesn't quite make sense to me either, but what do I know?  I'm just an everyday Joe Q. Citizen here, not political by nature, but disturbed by all of this expansion landfill process moving forward at lightning speed!

Why must we become the dumping ground for everyone’s trash and garbage?  We already sit on an earthquake fault, are highly susceptible to wild fires, have increased winds (and smells) because of our natural topography and now we want to add this to our City’s fame - being home to the largest landfill in Ventura County?

What’s wrong with this picture… or am I the only one whose viewfinder is not distorted by dollar signs?

If you are as worried about this application for expansion going forward, show up at the next meeting at City Hall (Monday, June 2nd, 2008 at 6:00PM) (18)... if you don't show up and tell our officials we do NOT want this landfill expanded, they are NOT not good mind readers - trust me, it will be approved!  Show up, stand up, be accounted for and have your opinion finally matter about something going on in your community!

Sincerely,
Linda Nelson

References and sources quoted:

  1. Simi Valley: A Nuclear Accident Worse than Three Mile Island

  2. Ex-mayor Hired as Consultant by Waste Management - Ventura County Star - 12/13/06

  3. "Land Agreement Called Into Question" - The Acorn - July 27, 2007

  4. Landfills and Transfer Stations - County of Ventura

  5. "Toland Landfill Expansion Vote Approved" - Daily News - May 23, 1996

  6. Ventura Regional Sanitation District

  7. Keeping Ventura County Clean - Waste Management's website

  8. CIWMB details - Simi Valley Landfill

  9. California Integrated Waste Management Board - Ventura County SWIS sites

  10. "Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2006" (pdf file)

  11. "Land Bought to Expand Dump - No Development Plan for Rest of Site" - Daily News - October 9, 2004

  12. "Birds and Landfills: What's the Big Deal?"

  13. Species-Specific Management System: Crows, Jays & Ravens

  14. Simi Valley Landfill - Is it all a matter of perspective?

  15. "Sewage disposal worries residents" - Ventura County Star - 7/24/07

  16. "Sludge drying at Toland Road Landfill addressed by Supervisor Long" - Santa Paula News - 6/22/07

  17. More Waste Management Documents

  18. "Time Well Spent" - Editorial - The Acorn - May 23, 2008

Further information:

Keeping it real (always),
Linda















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