Opponents Say Landfill Study Is Inadequate : Weldon Canyon: The panel considering the environmental report will delay a decision for at least three weeks.

About a dozen Ventura and Ojai Valley residents told a county panel Wednesday that a $1-million environmental study on a proposed landfill at Weldon Canyon fails to address their concerns about air pollution and danger to wildlife.

The residents were among almost 70 opponents and supporters of the Weldon Canyon dump who packed a small room at the Ventura County Government Center for a two-hour hearing before the county’s Environmental Report Review Committee.

“We do not think the study is adequate,” said Ruth Shimer, a member of the Environmental Coalition of Ventura County. “It’s very inadequate.”

The committee includes seven top county staff members who must decide whether the 1,475-page environmental study, which was completed in February, thoroughly addresses all the environmental side effects of the dump and considers all reasonable alternatives.

The committee decided to wait at least three weeks before making a final decision to give county planning officials time to respond to 635 written questions and comments sent to the county about the proposed dump.

Weldon Canyon, about a mile east of California 33 and north of Canada Larga Road, was identified by a 1985 county study as the best of 38 possible sites for a new landfill because of its clay soil and proximity to the cities of the western county.

For the proposed developer of the dump, Waste Management of North America Inc., winning the committee’s support is an important first step toward getting the project approved. Waste Management, which operates another landfill near Simi Valley, hopes to begin operating the landfill by 1992.

If the committee decides that the study is adequate, a final draft of the report will be sent to the Planning Commission and then to the Board of Supervisors for a decision on the dump. The committee can also decide that the study needs to be expanded to address other issues.

Scott Ellison, a county planner who has overseen development of the study, said the dump proposal has been studied for almost four years.

Of the project’s 118 negative environmental side effects, he said, only four significant effects cannot be mitigated. Those are smog generated by trucks and other equipment, dust, the destruction of paleontological areas and the loss of some wildlife habitat.

The environmental study suggests, among other things, that the landfill be reduced in size by 68% and the life span of the dump be slashed by more than half to ease such negative effects.

Despite Ellison’s assurances, Ventura and Ojai Valley residents told the committee that they are worried about living near the proposed dump.

“I’m only a housewife, and I have a 2-year-old, and I have cancer and have been through a bone-marrow transplant, and I’m very concerned about the environment my son grows up in,” said Cindy Korber, who lives two miles from the dump site.

Ojai Councilwoman Nina Shelley, a vocal opponent of the project, said much of the data used in the study is based on out-of-date information. She also said the study failed to thoroughly examine all the alternatives to a dump in Weldon Canyon.

Stan Greene, president of Citizens to Preserve the Ojai, said he is worried that emissions from the dump will increase the chances of nearby residents getting cancer.

The study says the chances of getting cancer are increased by 2.3 in a million for residents who live in the nearby Valley Vista neighborhood and are exposed to the dump’s highest foreseeable levels of emissions for 70 years.

Thomas E. Malley, an attorney for the family that owns the dump site and is leasing it to Waste Management, said he believes that the study was thoroughly investigated.

He said the landowners, the Bonsall family, plan to continue living on land next to the dump and believe that they will not be affected.

“How could you, in a practical world, find a more thorough report?” he said.

The Weldon landfill would replace Oxnard’s Bailard Landfill, which is scheduled to close in late 1993. The Ventura Regional Sanitation District, a public agency that represents eight of the county’s 10 cities, operates the Bailard Landfill and another dump near Santa Paula.

The district has applied for a two-year extension for Bailard and, at the same time, is considering 34 other landfill sites to replace Bailard should Weldon be rejected. The district is expected to identify the sites next month.