Broken Government

Attending the Ventura County Planning Commission regarding the Simi Valley Landfill expansion shows how broken our government is, as well as how selfish and foolish people are.

It is amazing to me how broken the government is. I can see stupid people asking for things, but the chair of the planning commission should not promote such a view. It also seems that the chair was biased as she let a long time friend of hers, who is against the landfill and is the lawyer involved in the lawsuit, talk for a really long time.

It does not seem that any of those against the expansion understand (or want to admit) that in order to build the buildings, which are in the current footprint of the landfill, it can not be done after the land was used as a landfill. It also means that once the building are built, the land will not be used as a landfill, thereby keeping the landfill further away from the 118 freeway.

So, foolish people bought houses at the Enclave, next to a freeway, which freeways generally don't have a decrease in traffic (long term). Now, they are looking for someone else to pay for a soundwall to increase the value of their property? Now, doing some simple math shows how silly it is for WM to pay for anything related to them. Assuming the worst case that ALL of the additional truck traffic would go past them, with 40k vehicles per day and 392 (approx.) additional vehicles (if suddenly the maximum permitted truck trips were to occur under the expansion, which is currently at 822 and would increase to 892), that would be around 1% increase, but the traffic count of over 103k per day was reported, which would be less than .4%, but since not all the traffic will go past them, the percentage is just so low to be meaningless. Divide the traffic three ways for the 118 through Moorpark, the 118 through Simi Valley and the 23 south and the percentage is extremely small. Looking at the traffic increase, even for the 118, it is so small, but people want to make it appear big so that they can try to get something out of it.

Math shows that the jobs issues is nothing as well, but it seems clear to me that the EIR is used to legally extort money from companies. Just looking at Simi Valley, 130 jobs is only .1% of the population and that is going to have no effect on housing or recreation if they move to Simi Valley, especially considering the unemployment rate and what is going on with housing. When you add Moorpark, the number drops even smaller.

It sounds great that Simi Valley should get money for the traffic going on a State highway, but of course those same people would not want to pay other cities for the vehicles which drive on the roads to get to Simi Valley. The trucks for UPS come from Sylmar and I believe the FedEx trucks come from Canoga Park. Also, under that model, those who live closer to the landfill should get money from those who live further away since the trucks have to drive past their houses. Also, those people don't want to pay other cities for all the waste that leaves Simi Valley. I suspect that if you did the math on that you would find that Simi Valley would owe more money than what they would get.

Sadly, it seems to me that those who are against the project falls into two categories, those who want something out of it and those who have been deceived. Why can't people just look at the facts and do the right thing instead of trying to get some personal gain out of it?

A county inspector went to the sites and saw monitoring wells covered in cobwebs, debris and dirt that had not been disturbed in some time.

The district attorney's office also sealed the monitoring sites. To test the wells, the company would have had to break the seals. But the seals remained intact, officials said.

The county district attorney's office set up surveillance of the sites, and concluded that no one was monitoring methane levels. Yet the GeoScience Analytical reports kept coming in, Thompson said.