OXNARD : Dump Installs Wood Grinder

The Ventura Regional Sanitation District has installed a wood grinder at the Bailard Landfill near Oxnard to reduce the amount of lumber that is dumped in the landfill, officials said Friday.

The district is asking area residents and business owners to bring clean, unpainted and untreated waste wood to the landfill for grinding. The chips are sold to private companies who use them for soil amendments and as fuel for the energy generation plant in Delano, district spokeswoman Kitty Dill said.

The chips are also used by the district for composting sludge during sewage treatment, Dill said.

“Right now, we’re grinding 40 tons of wood a day and hope to increase that to 100 tons per day once the word on the grinding operation gets out,” she said.

District officials have lowered the cost for disposing of the wood from $39.50 a ton to $24. The cost of a single load has been reduced from $15 to $12.

Dill said that within six months, the district will begin recycling green waste--tree prunings and small limbs with green leaves--to further reduce the amount of waste headed for the landfill.

The Bailard site is on Gonzales Road near Victoria Avenue.