Simi NIMBY* (*Not In My Back Yard)...
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  Please explain to me...   

I am a SIMPLE person - not a political animal - and am known for 'meaning what I say and saying what I mean'... As I have tried to educate myself and get up to speed on this expansion issue, items keep popping up that I just DON'T understand... I've collected them here in the hopes that someone finally explains them to me (or maybe others who find them as confusing and as illogical as I do!)...

• "The geographical radius of landfill users has expanded dramatically in recent years. Waste from approximately 120 different jurisdictions, totaling over 1 million tons, was received at the facility over the past four quarters. About 28% of this waste came from jurisdictions outside Ventura County, and just over 49% of the Ventura County wastes originated in the western portion of the county."  ... source
  
  1) Why is 28% of the dumping at the landfill coming from outside the county?
  2) If Simi Valley is only 16% of the population of Ventura County or Simi Valley & Moorpark combined represent 29% of the population, why is almost half of the county's wastes being dumped onto our doorstep in the landfill?  Does it not make sense that the largest contributors of waste dump it into their own backyards instead of ours?

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• Then why did the same letter from the Board of Supervisors (April 13, 2004) sourced above make this statement?
  
  "The proposed Surcharge increase is projected to have only a minimal impact on residential collection rates for county jurisdictions utilizing the SimJ Valley Landfill. In the unincorporated County, estimates range from $0.15 to $0.40 per household per month, depending upon the service area. The impact on residential collection rates in the adjacent cities of Simi Valley, Moorpark, and Thousand Oaks will be approximately $0.37 per household per month."
  
  What's wrong with the math here? If you live in an unincorporated location, you might see only a $.15 increase, but because you live in Simi, you'll see a $.37 increase? We ALREADY pay more in taxes because we LIVE in an incorporated location... we have the landfill in OUR backyard... Can someone explain to me exactly where the lower trash fees are then?  Or did the City Manager get hoodwinked like all the rest of us here in Simi did when we signed a 30-year contract two years before the five-year contract was set to expire???
  
  FURTHERMORE, did ANYONE ask ME if I wanted lower trash fees in exchange for another 30 years living next to the largest landfill in Ventura County which takes everyone else's trash they don't want in THEIR backyard???

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If SOAR (Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources) has effectively done its job (and here's an article by Steve Bennett which validates this position), then how does the expansion of the landfill relate to the SOAR mandate?  Waste Management now owns all the land between Simi Valley and Moorpark through their purchase of 2800 acres.  Depending on what you read and hear, there are promises already that if we let this expansion be approved, "there will be room for 60 soccer fields and a girls' baseball facility built"...

• Is this not in direct conflict with the SOAR mandate?
• Is land able to be used for agricultural purposes once it's been a landfill and filled to capacity?  (personal note: I'm not so sure I want to eat anything that's been grown on top of a 'super dump'... how do we as citizens even know what's been dumped into the landfill for the past 30 years, let alone what will be dumped there for another 30 years when it's expanded (now) to double the size)
• Is this expansion just the first step in plans to have a 'superdump' landfill that stretches from Simi Valley to Moorpark down the road?

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• Brea Canyon is the "mouth" that feeds into the Tierra Rejada Valley - how will landfill expansion affect wildlife in our area?

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• In 2002, we stopped the development of the 2,800 acre into homes and then six years later, we are going to allow this same piece of land to be turned into a 'superdump' by approving the landfill expansion plan when we already know Los Angeles and other areas are dumping into the landfill?  We'd rather have a mountain of trash taller than the Reagan Library than homes?  What kind of sense does that make?

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• Approximately $160 million of this is to be spent on a juvenile justice office complex and expansion of Todd Road Jail (or 42%).  It has been reported to me (although I can not source this figure yet) that the County gets $6 million a year ($30 million in 5 years) from dumping at the landfill.  So the residents of Simi Valley suffer through having a superdump in our back yard so we can better house criminals in the county?

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Californians recycling record numbers of beverage containers - On May 21st of 2008, the California Department of Conservation unveiled a new report showing that Californians are recycling a record number of beverage containers. More than 14.7 billion beverage containers were recycled by Californians in 2007, an 11% increase over 2006 levels, and 50% more than were recycled just five years ago. Overall, nearly one million tons of glass, aluminum, and plastic beverage containers are now recycled in California under the state’s 20 year old Container Recycling Law. No other state comes close to matching this level of container recycling. (source, courtesy of Californians Against Waste).

• If this is an 11% increase over 2006 levels and the population of our city is growing at less than 11% (currently), why are we outgrowing the capacity of the landfill and have a need to double its size?  Beverage containers were once the number one item sent to landfills incidentally, according to the EPA.

Keeping it real (always),
Linda

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