InsideVC.com
By John Scheibe
December 12, 2000
Ventura could spend from $1 million to $5 million to safeguard its water treatment plant from a county hazardous-waste center 60 feet away, city officials said Monday night.
"I believe with all of my heart that the reason they opened it there was because it was relatively convenient," Ventura Director of Public Works Ron Calkins told City Council members.
Calkins said a recent engineering estimate found the city might be forced to cover open water ponds at the treatment plant to protect them from poisons such as bleach, acid, paint and oil brought to the county's Pollution Prevention Center by people from Ojai and elsewhere. He added the county also spent about $500,000 on the center when a privately owned one in Ventura could easily handle the toxic materials. The county center opened on Saturday.
"I don't think it's prudent for the government to spend half a million dollars on something like this when the private sector can do it better," Calkins told the council.
But Norma Camacho, who works for the county's Public Works Agency, cited a study by the county showing there was only a 1 in 42 million chance that materials taken to the recycling center would end up in the city's water supply.
Camacho said the odds of being involved in an airplane or car accident are much greater. Camacho said the study also showed the water treatment plant runs a greater risk of being contaminated by drifting clouds of pesticides applied to nearby orchards and by toxic PCB chemicals if transformers on nearby power lines explode.
The recycling center is located in what used to be a county fire station. Camacho added the area near the water plant already was contaminated by leaking underground fuel tanks at the old fire station. She told the council those tanks were removed and the toxic fuel was removed from the ground.
Camacho also said that while the pollution center is now taking "more innocuous" material such as water-based paint and bleach, county officials may upgrade the center to accept more toxic materials, including oil-based paints and gasoline. She said none of the materials would be stored at the center longer than 30 days.
"The whole point of the facility is to get hazardous material out of the environment," Camacho said.
Councilman Jim Friedman said he brought the issue before the council after years of frustration in which city officials repeatedly told county officials they wanted the center put elsewhere, but to no avail.
Although this is a county-run facility, Friedman said, he believes most county supervisors know little if anything about its location next to a water-treatment plant.
Friedman encouraged Venturans to take the issue before the Ventura County Board of Supervisors.
— John Scheibe's e-mail address is mailto:[email protected].
To see more of InsideVC.com, or to subscribe, go to www.InsideVC.com.
(c) 2000 InsideVC.com. All Rights Reserved.
