FILLMORE : Waste Authority Seeks Haulers’ Bids

Hoping to increase their bargaining power, representatives of a west Ventura County waste authority said Monday that they will ask local trash haulers what it would cost to handle their combined tonnage.

Members of the Western Ventura County Waste Management Authority said they plan to approach haulers and trash disposal firms next month for contract proposals.

Ventura County Supervisor Maggie Kildee, chairwoman of the waste authority, said the agency will ask for a range of contract estimates based on tonnage and length of contract. For example, she said, the authority wants to know what it would cost to handle 200 tons of trash for one year, as compared to two or three years.

Whatever the authority decides, Kildee said, each of its members would retain the option of choosing its own hauler.

The authority, which was formed in November to find an alternative for disposing of west county trash after Bailard Landfill in Oxnard closes in 1997, includes the county and the cities of Ventura, Fillmore, Ojai and Santa Paula.

Fillmore Councilman Roger Campbell, who represents his city on the authority, said the agency would leave it up to the waste haulers to determine where to send the west county’s trash after Bailard shuts down.

Campbell and the other members of the authority, however, said they are against sending the trash to Toland Road Landfill, located between Fillmore and Santa Paula.

The Ventura Regional Sanitation District, which operates Toland, last month agreed to spend $770,000 on an environmental study of a proposed expansion of the dump.