Is landfill committee helping or hurting the cause?

Public concern over Waste Management's plans to double the size of the Simi Valley Landfill has heated up at an alarming rate, and look out- things are just getting started.

With the trash hauler's application yet to be deemed complete by county planners, the comments of an independent, citizen-led task force commissioned by Councilmember Barbra Williamson have already stirred up the kind of rhetoric and political infighting usually reserved for election years. It's a sticky situation that could hurt, not help, the residents as they express concern over the proposed expansion.

In their first meeting, members of the task force got off to a productive start, bringing up questions that begged to be asked concerning the proposal's environmental impact report, its impact on local traffic and air pollution, and the likelihood of groundwater contamination- just as Councilmember Williamson said they would in April.

But in its second meeting, held last Wednesday, the task force abruptly turned its sights on the city and its relationship with Waste Management. Without taking the time to address city staff directly on the matter, the committee played semantics with a 1999 agreement that had no bearing on the current expansion and accused the two sides of engaging in, according to the words of one task force member, "a conspiracy."

For the committee to make such a bold statement without first consulting the source is, at best, counterproductive. Williamson, a member of the City Council at the time the agreement was signed, should know better.

The landfill expansion is a matter of serious concern to the residents of Simi Valley, and if the task force members truly want to be a representative body, they must conduct their ongoing investigation accurately, honestly and without political agenda.

When Councilmember Williamson decided to form the task force in April, she promised the residents a watchdog, not a pit bull. If she truly has the best intentions of all the city's residents in mind, she'll get the task force back on track.