Landfill Closure Ends an Era, Gives City Fresh Start

By all accounts, it was a lousy place to put a landfill--even in 1962, when environmental laws were practically nonexistent.

For one thing, there was no dirt fill available nearby. It had to be trucked in at great expense.

Worse, the mostly above-ground Bailard Landfill is on the edge of the Santa Clara River, which--for a time anyway--meant there was a danger that portions of the dump could be washed away in a flood.

“It would never be a landfill site today,” said John R. Conaway, director of solid waste for the dump’s operator. “It’s the wrong place for it.”

Indeed, when Bailard shuts its gates for good Saturday it will not only mark the end of an era but also the successful closure of what was once considered to be among California’s worst open dumps.

As late as 1987, Bailard remained on the state’s list of Superfund cleanup sites.

The closure will also present a much welcomed opportunity for the city of Oxnard to rid itself of an ugly stigma that came with being home to the largest dump site in the west county.

“It’s been kind of an insult to the people of Oxnard,” said Supervisor John Flynn, a longtime resident and representative of the area. “The landfill was like a cesspool for the western part of Ventura County.”

A longtime opponent of Bailard, Flynn recalled a run-in with one trash-seeking sea gull that seemed to sum up his city’s shared frustration.

“I was walking in the River Ridge area a few years back when a sea gull flew over and dropped a pork chop on my head,” he said, laughing at the memory. “I guess it was the wrong time to be campaigning there.”

Insensitive sea gulls, however, were only part of the nuisance problem. On hot, humid days, when the wind was just right, “you could smell the dump clear over to Ventura Road,” two miles away, Flynn said.

But those days are over and when the closure of the landfill is finally completed, properly landscaped and perhaps developed with equestrian trails and soccer fields, it will be something Oxnard residents can look to with pride, the supervisor said.

“It’s going to be a beautiful entranceway for the city,” Flynn said.

But it may be awhile before the entranceway is picture ready. Turning a landfill into a source of civic pride is not easy--or cheap.

By the time the landfill’s closure is complete in about a year, the Ventura Regional Sanitation District, the public agency that operates the dump, will have spent $27 million, officials said. The money comes from a portion of disposal fees collected by the landfill over the years.

During the next 12 months, workers will place a 4-foot-thick clay and dirt cap over portions of the 160-acre dump site that remain uncovered. The cap is designed to keep water out and guard against leakage of methane gas and leachate generated by the roughly 5 million tons of trash buried on the site.

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The landfill itself, which reaches about 58 feet above ground at its highest point, is constructed in four layers, each separated by a band of compacted clay soil that serves as an intermediate barrier.

“It’s like a layered cake,” said Gary Haden, solid waste operations manager for the sanitation district. “You’ve got the cake as the trash, then you put a layer of frosting on each layer, that’s the clay.”

Closure plans also call for planting thousands of eucalyptus and pine trees as well as other vegetation and shrubbery to guard against erosion.

But the sanitation district’s responsibility will not end there. Under state law, the district will be required to secure and maintain the landfill site for the next 30 years, monitoring for any gas, water or surface problems that might emerge.

This alone will cost the district $400,000 a year, or a total of $12 million.

These are staggering costs considering the minimal state and federal closure requirements that existed when Haden got his start in the landfill business 20 years ago.

“When I started, the only closure requirements were that you would put two feet of dirt over a landfill and walk away in 120 days,” he said. “There was no environmental monitoring or anything.”

This is not the first time Bailard has halted trash operations. Opened in 1962, the privately owned dump was cited by local regulatory agencies over the years for numerous environmental problems and voluntarily suspended operations in 1975.

Shortly thereafter, the sanitation district took over management of the landfill site and over the next decade spent $2 million covering the dump’s open areas, improving drainage, installing ground water monitoring wells, constructing a levee for flood protection and installing security fencing.

The district’s work enabled the nonoperating dump to be removed from the state’s list of Superfund cleanup sites. The Superfund program uses state and federal dollars to clean up open dump and hazardous waste sites across the country.

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In the mid-1980s, the district began taking some of the methane gas collected at the landfill and selling it to Pacific Energy for conversion to electricity. The gas provides enough fuel to power more than 5,000 residences throughout the area, bringing the district about $150,000 a year in gas royalties. The district also takes methane gas from two other sites--the Coastal Landfill and the Santa Clara Landfill, both closed. The three sites generate about $400,000 annually in total gas royalties for the district.

The sanitation district was so successful in getting Bailard back in satisfactory condition that it was able to gain permission to reopen the landfill in 1989 and has continued operations ever since.

What makes this significant is that the district, a local public agency, will now use money it received from its trash operations to properly close the dump without the state or federal government’s involvement, said Steve Chase, environmental coordinator for the city of Ventura.

“It was a local solution financed with local revenues,” Chase said. “A public agency basically came in, took over a mess, cleaned up the mess and removed it as a liability to all of us. It was the right call at the right time.”

Although the dump is above the Oxnard Aquifer, there are two natural clay layers--including one about 70 feet wide--that lie between the unlined landfill and the aquifer several hundred feet below.

Sanitation district officials said continual ground-water testing leads them to believe that there has been no migration of leachate into ground-water supplies.

“There’s no indication that there’s any contamination in the aquifer below,” Haden said. “And there shouldn’t be any change in that at all.”

But Flynn is not so sure.

“I think it still has the potential for leaking into the aquifer,” he said.

Although it may be years away, city officials said they hope to one day be able to develop equestrian trails, soccer fields and baseball diamonds on the Bailard site.

While such hopes may take some money on the city’s part, it is not beyond reason. After all, the old Santa Clara Landfill is now the River Ridge Golf Course, situated just across Victoria Avenue from Bailard. Even the old Coastal Landfill next to the golf course is unrecognizable as a former dump site, as it is nearly covered with vegetation.

But whatever is to be done with the Bailard site is still years away. Officials said it could be five years before the landfill is ready to support parks and hiking trails.

Meanwhile, a newly enlarged Toland Road Landfill has been approved to replace Bailard as the west county’s primary dump, beginning Aug. 26. The neighboring cities of Santa Paula and Fillmore, however, continue to fight the Toland expansion in court.

It’s a battle that Oxnard officials can sympathize with. Councilman Bedford Pinkard, a native of Oxnard, said as long as he can remember there have been landfills in his city and that he can’t wait to finally see Bailard shut down.

“I think it’s about time,” he said. “And good riddance to it.”

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Closing a Landfill

Bailard Landfill in Oxnard will officially close on Saturday. But it will be a year or more before the Ventura Regional Sanitation District, the public agency that operates the dump, completes its ongoing $27- million closure operations. It is required to maintain the site for another 30 years.

Protection below ground

* Ventura sanitation officials say the aquitards, natural clay layers, protect the area’s aquifers from contamination.

Protection above ground

1. A 4-foot thick clay and dirt cap will be placed over portions of the 160- acre dump site that remain uncovered. The cap is designed to guard against the leakage of methane gas generated by the roughly 5 million tons of trash buried on the site.

2. The landfill is constructed in four layers, with each separated by compacted clay that acts as a barrier against gas and liquid seepage.