Treatment would be at 450 degrees and remaining water would be treated at the Toland site and again at a wastewater treatment plant.End-dump trailers - enclosed and those covered with a tarp - would carry up to 22 tons of the sludge to the landfill.The Sierra Club’s Los Padres Chapter has expressed concerns about the VRSD sludge plan, with Conservation Chairman Alan Sanders noting that the VRSD has to prove that the sludge toxins would not enter the water or food supply.Although sludge dumping was not allowed when the controversial VRSD landfill expansion was approved in the 1990s, the agency applied for a state sludge permit in 2002.At the March 20 Council meeting several area growers objected to the plan that would provide a sludge dump to Ventura County cities.Lawler said that VRSD would charge up to $50 a ton for processing; Oxnard alone disposes of about 22,000 tons annually, which would bring about $1.1 million to the VRSD alone. Tonnage countywide - about 84,000 tons total - could bring more than $4 million annually to VRSD coffers.Compared to other methods what the VRSD is proposing would include utilizing landfill gases for energy, a cost saver said Lawler.Anita Nelson wanted assurances at the March 20 meeting that the VRSD would not act as its own lead agency during the approval process.“...what the rest of the county is asking the Santa Clara River Valley to take their trash and their sewage as well,” although the process can be done at sewage plants said rancher Gordon Kimball.“We have the jail that nobody else wanted, the landfill no one in the county wanted” and now the river valley is faced with taking the county’s human waste as well, Kimball added.
Toland: Public meeting Wednesday on sludge facility Draft EIR
July 12, 2006
Santa Paula News
Although the state Integrated Waste Management Board was told in 2002 by a Ventura Regional Sanitation District representative that the Santa Clara River Valley communities had been notified about VRSD’s application, it’s recent news to most people that Toland Road Landfill is being targeted for a new sludge disposal facility.
By Peggy KellySanta Paula TimesAlthough the state Integrated Waste Management Board was told in 2002 by a Ventura Regional Sanitation District representative that the Santa Clara River Valley communities had been notified about VRSD’s application, it’s recent news to most people that Toland Road Landfill is being targeted for a new sludge disposal facility.The Draft Environmental Review of the proposed Toland Road Landfill Biosolids Facility and Electrical Generation Plant will be the focus of a meeting at VRSD offices Wednesday, July 12 at 10 a.m.A one-hour long public information meeting will be held at VRSD offices, 1001 Partridge Drive, Ventura.The DEIR review period - when the draft document can be commented on in writing - will end July 19 at 5 p.m.According to the DEIR up to 7,000 tons a month of 80 percent water/20 percent solids sludge will be taken to the Toland Landfill, located mid-way between Santa Paula and Fillmore.Although the DEIR notes that the project received “verbal support” from the cities of Santa Paula and Fillmore, the only time that the issue was addressed by the Santa Paula City Council was earlier this year.Councilwoman Mary Ann Krause had requested an update after reading in a county newspaper that Toland was being considered for the sludge facility.VRSD General Manager Mark Lawler made the presentation on biosolids handling to the City Council at the March 20 meeting.In June Kern County approved a ballot measure to prohibit the spreading of “biosolids” i.e. sewage sludge on any land in unincorporated areas, including land owned by the City of Oxnard utilized by many Ventura County cities for sludge dumping.The sludge, human waste that would be heated and treated at the proposed facility at Toland, would be used as a landfill cover or for commercial purposes according to the DEIR.
