Utah Town Eager for Trash in Ventura County Train Plan

It seems that almost everyone in East Carbon, Utah, wants to get their hands on Ventura County’s garbage.

Local officials and others reacted with enthusiasm last week as word reached the town that two Ventura County supervisors had proposed shipping waste from California by train to the new dump three miles outside the East Carbon limits.

After all, the 2,400-acre East Carbon Development Corp. landfill was approved in 1990 by city and county leaders with the express purpose of setting up waste-by-rail agreements across state lines.

“Bring it on, send your friends,” Carbon County Commissioner Emma R. Kuykendall said happily when she heard that Ventura County might send up to 500 tons of waste each day to the landfill.

Ventura County has joined a growing list of Southern California cities and counties considering rail links to out-of-state landfills as a solution to the growing waste-disposal dilemma.

Ventura County officials are leaning toward exporting the county’s trash to avoid a crisis should Bailard Landfill near Oxnard close before a replacement landfill is approved. To supporters, it seems a perfect match between a growing suburban county running out of landfill space and a rural community eager to set aside some of its open space for an appropriate fee.

“We are in a very bad economic depression here,” Kuykendall said. “We need the jobs. We need the tax base and we need work for our people.”

East Carbon is a coal-mining town of about 1,200 people located 130 miles southeast of Salt Lake City.

The entire county--a remote, conservative, industrial area of 21,000 people--has been hit hard by mine closures and the struggling economy, said landfill co-owner Nick Santinos, who lives about 17 miles from the dump.

Although Santinos and his partners will be able to put only about six to 10 people to work with the dumping contracts signed so far, the landfill could lead to an employment boom, he said.

“The more waste we take in, the more jobs we will provide,” Santinos said, adding that a similar facility in Arlington, Ore., employs more than 70 people.

The prospect of additional jobs was key in winning local support for the massive new landfill, which was built along a 3.5-mile section of railroad tracks near town to make it easy to accept out-of-state deliveries.

“When the City Council and the mayor supported the landfill, they were looking at the fact that we really do need jobs here,” East Carbon Recorder Jaylene Marakis said. “This is a very depressed area.”

Carbon County Sheriff Jim Robertson, a landfill supporter, was the mayor of East Carbon when the dump was granted its permits. “I personally don’t see anything wrong with it,” Robertson said.

The economic hardship facing the county’s 21,000 residents weighed heavily on his decision, he said, but he also believes the landfill is environmentally sound.

“This is going to be a state-of-the-art landfill,” said Robertson, who lives about three miles from the facility. “It doesn’t bother me any more than the coal mines around here.”

Three out of four local residents supported the dump during the permitting process, said Linda Johnson, a reporter for The Sun-Advocate, a weekly newspaper in the town of Price, about 18 miles from the landfill site.

In elections last year, a slate of anti-dump candidates was resoundingly defeated for seats on the East Carbon City Council, Johnson said. “I don’t think anyone wants to be known as a garbage dump, but this area needs something to get it going.”

Meanwhile, Ventura County Supervisors John K. Flynn and Maggie Erickson Kildee unabashedly see the area as a possible final resting ground for waste from the western part of the county.

The two supervisors first proposed sending waste on Southern Pacific railroad cars to Utah at a board meeting last week. The waste-by-rail system is seen as an interim solution next year should the Bailard Landfill close in late 1993 before officials approve a new dump site in Weldon Canyon, between Ventura and Ojai.

Environmentalists, Ojai Valley groups and Ojai city officials have voiced strenuous opposition to the proposed dump.

“We don’t want to put all our eggs in one basket,” Flynn said last week. “This is a good interim solution in the event that Weldon gets tied up in legal matters.”

Flynn admitted that he “wouldn’t want people shipping their waste to Ventura County.” But he said people living near the Utah landfill did not feel that way.

“The people in Utah who own the landfill have invited us to do this . . . and it is a permitted site,” Flynn said. “They didn’t permit a landfill that holds 960 million tons just for the state of Utah, so obviously they intended to get waste from out of state.”

Ojai City Councilwoman Nina Shelley, an outspoken opponent of the Weldon Canyon facility, was unconvinced that the waste-by-rail plan was the best alternative for Ventura County.

“It seems to be a pretty far-out idea,” Shelley said. “I have some problems with hauling the waste of this county across three states.

“Ethically and morally speaking, I don’t dump my trash in my neighbor’s yard; I take care of it myself,” Shelley said.

David Gavrich, western regional manager for East Carbon Development Corp., disagreed with Shelley’s logic.

Shipping waste is a regional solution to a regional problem, he said.

“We have to get rid of this ‘We’re dumping on these poor people’ mentality,” Gavrich said.