County kicks garbage handling crisis down the road again
Written by Miami Today on November 5, 2024
Another call this week to pick a site for a vast new $1.5 billion solid waste processing facility to handle most of Miami-Dade County's garbage was put off two more months as Mayor Daniella Levine Cava asked commissioners for more time and they agreed.
Multiple other efforts to decide had failed. A December decision would come almost two years after fire devastated the 160-acre Resource Recovery Facility in Doral, closing it and forcing the county to take jury-rigged measures to dispose of the garbage of millions in Miami-Dade.
Nobody takes the decision lightly, because every location that the county has floated for the facility has vocal detractors nearby, including mass protests from across the Broward County line in Miramar.
Yet time ticks away: the county's website says that depending on which location is chosen, it would take seven to 10 years from that point to get a new processing hub up and running.
Mayor Levine Cava cited two reasons for seeking the latest delay, this one to Dec. 3. Both have potentially major financial impacts on the handling of solid waste.
The first is that election Day Nov. 5 came just the day before the county commission was to act on solid waste. The county has been pressing Doral for financial contributions paid to guarantee that the new solid waste plant would not use the site of the county's now-closed Doral incinerator, whose smells and emissions have been a constant source of complaints.
"There will be changes in the city council's composition" in Doral, the mayor wrote to commissioners in seeking the delay. "It is prudent to ensure than any final proposal from Doral with respect to an interlocal agreement (especially the financial terms) aligns with the priorities of the new council."
The mayor's other reason for delay was that the county hasn't yet pinned down the costs to acquire each privately owned site on which to potentially build the plant.
"In the process of conducting a thorough cost analysis for each site, we have received best and final offers from the two privately owned sites, Medley and Okeechobee," she wrote. "Additionally, the owner of the Medley site has also proposed another site he owns in northwest Miami-Dade. Our team is currently reviewing these offers and engaging in ongoing discussions and negotiations in order to secure the final cost figures for each."
In the financial equation, that leaves up in the air questions of when, how much, and how long to open, plus how much it would cost to the truck garbage to each site. Only then will the county face total price tags for a decision that must factor in how close neighbors would be to the plant and what emissions, odors and truck traffic they would face.
The four-decade-old Doral plant that is being replaced was one of the largest of its kind in the nation. It processed nearly 3,000 tons of waste daily, generating up to 77 megawatts of power. The site included a waste processing area, an energy generation unit, and environmental control systems to manage emissions of the waste-to-energy process.
The county has moved ahead with planning even without a site. Last December the commission awarded a $65 million contract to AtkinsRealis, an infrastructure consultant. The Quebec-based company is advising the county on a new "mass burn waste-to-energy" plant. AtkinsRealis is to bring design plans to 30% completion when the county selects a site for the plant.
