A Sept. 30 deadline for troubled West Marin Sanitary Landfill to close has come and gone, but the Point Reyes Station dump remains open.

"We've had 12 customers already today," landfill operator Leroy Martinelli said proudly on Wednesday afternoon, one day after the deadline. "We've got 400 signatures to keep this landfill open."

The deadline had been agreed upon last summer by the Martinellis and county supervisors, plus directors of the Stinson Beach Water District and Bolinas Public Utility District.

Under terms of the pact, the landfill agreed to close on or before Sept. 30, 1997. In exchange, the county gave the Martinellis $100,000 to help fund environmental studies at the dump and approved a large increase in dumping prices that was supposed to have generated another $200,000.

However, the Martinellis have reported to the county that dumping this year has fallen well short of projections, and that they need to stay in business if they hope to pay their debts.

"The agreement," said Martinelli on Wednesday, "that doesn't mean a goddamn thing."

Martinelli told The Light that the family has sued the county, but referred further questioning to his attorney, who wasn't available for comment by press time. An attorney at the County Counsel's Office said she's heard about the suit but hasn't been served with it yet.

"We're not going to back down. They're the ones who put us in the garbage business. They came to us," Martinelli said, referring back to 1965, when county officials persuaded Martinelli's father Elmer to open a community dump as a way to solve West Marin litter problem. "This is all political," he said. "This thing is just starting to hit."

One of the landfill's critics, Dennis Rodoni, an Olema resident and director of both North Marin Water District and the environmental group Tomales Bay Association, speculated that the landfill is simply stalling the dump-closure process.

As soon as the dump stops accepting garbage, Rodoni noted, the expensive closure process is triggered and can't be stopped. Under state law, dump closure is financed by the landfill owners and operators as well as anybody who has dumped garbage there.

However, Supervisor Steve Kinsey on Wednesday said the Martinellis have said all along that they'll take the issue of closure financing to court, and let a judge decide who pays what.

In Rodoni's opinion, however, the dump owners "are violating the agreement with the county and with the customers." The dump owners, he said, should have to pay back the $300,000 the county and West Marin residents chipped in.

Rodoni added, however, "Legal minds have told me it's not a very well written, binding agreement."

Kinsey said he's not sure what authority the county has to enforce the agreement, and that County Counsel's Office will have to figure it out.

In any case, very little garbage will be going into the dump from now on. The major contributor, Shoreline Disposal, which collects the vast majority of West Marin trash, stopped taking their loads to the West Marin dump on Wednesday