A Mountain Of Trash Could Halt Development Around Miami. The Race Is On For Solutions

The outgoing director of Miami-Dade County’s Department of Solid Waste Management had a stark warning for county officials when he resigned in July: Find a place for the county’s growing pile of garbage, or you’ll be forced to stop approving new development across a broad swath of the region. 

The county will run afoul next year of rules requiring it to have five years’ worth of garbage capacity, Michael Fernandez wrote in a July 3 resignation letter. “At this point, the County will have to issue a moratorium to stop all development in Miami-Dade County or initiate the plans that were suggested in the past,” he wrote. 

The dire proclamation followed a February incinerator fire that cut local capacity by roughly half. And while county leadership has pushed back on Fernandez's assertion, its elected officials are pushing to cobble together a solution to keep overflowing trash from stifling construction, including desperately needed new housing.

Their latest move came Tuesday, when the Board of County Commissioners approved a $65M contract to kick off a proposal process to develop a new waste-to-energy facility. 

Officials are racing against looming deadlines to secure funding for the project, but they have also faced a wave of pushback from residents who oppose a trash burning facility and threats of legal challenges that could delay construction. The contentious process threatens to run up the cost to dispose of the trash and avoid a halt to construction, which is already costing the county millions of additional dollars. 

County officials have been grasping for solutions to avoid violating the Miami-Dade County’s Comprehensive Development Master Plan, which lays out objectives and rules addressing development across the county, the third-largest in Florida at 1,900 square miles. 

Among the provisions of the CDMP is a requirement that the county maintains a minimum of five years’ worth of garbage capacity. It states that “no development order authorizing new development or a significant expansion of an existing use shall be issued” if it is unable to meet that standard. 

Much of the county’s densest population centers, including the cities of Miami and Miami Beach, fall outside the purview of Miami-Dade County’s Department of Solid Waste Management. But the agency is responsible for operations across the majority of the county’s southern portion and many of its suburban municipalities including Aventura, Cutler Bay, Doral, Miami Gardens, Opa-Locka, Pinecrest and Sunny Isles Beach. 

A garbage-fueled construction moratorium would halt development of housing in some of the neighborhoods where more affordable housing is most likely to be developed as the city faces an affordability crisis.

The county is the most-competitive apartment market in the country and the high cost of rent — averaging $2,451 in November, according to RentCafe — has driven many middle-class residents away and led the county's population to fall between 2020 and 2022 as Florida's population boomed. It has a shortage of 135,000 affordable units for renter households earning half of the area's median income or less, according to Miami Homes for All data reported by the Miami New Times.

Around half the county’s trash, more than 1 million tons of waste per year, had been processed by the waste-to-energy incinerator in Doral before a Feb. 12 fire — which burned for days as neighbors were advised to stay indoors — took the facility offline.

The county’s landfills are also nearing capacity, compounding the problem of what to do with all the garbage it can no longer burn. A Landfill Capacity Report in July 2022, before the incinerator fire, projected the county’s northern landfill would reach capacity by 2026 and its South Dade Landfill would be full by 2030.

A resolution moving through the county commission would increase capacity at the northern site by piling trash higher, but it has been deferred indefinitely after clearing the committee level. 

The county is instead opting to truck much of the area’s garbage north to a landfill outside Okeechobee that is owned by trash behemoth Waste Management. The stopgap solution is projected to cost the county more than $32M annually.

In addition to a capacity crisis, the county is racing to break ground on a new incinerator to secure funding for its construction. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava warned in a September memo to the commission that the availability of up to $200M in insurance proceeds related to the Doral incinerator fire was contingent on the construction of a new facility beginning within two years of the incident.

“While our insurance broker has indicated that extensions of deadlines can be given, the insurer would need to see significant progress towards commencement of construction,” the memo states. “A request for an extension would not be entertained without clear progress having been made.”  

Levine Cava’s office didn’t respond to Bisnow’s request for comment. 

The county is also planning to ask for federal funding through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 to build the facility, which has an estimated price tag between $1B and $1.5B.

“It is about trying to move that calendar quickly because of the insurance procurement issues, the Inflation Reduction Act and other funding sources,” Jimmy Morales, the county’s chief operations officer, said at the Tuesday commission meeting of the $65M contract to begin the process. “The sooner we get to a contract with a design-builder at some future date to begin construction, the more likely we’ll be able to pull in more funds.”

A site has yet to be chosen, but the project is already facing headwinds from concerned residents and at least one local mayor. Three sites have been shortlisted, including the site of the now-defunct Doral incinerator. 

Doral residents lined up to voice their disapproval for rebuilding on the old site at a special commission meeting on Sept. 19. Levine Cava’s administration has also expressed concern that the site’s proximity to industrial and waste facilities in Medley could complicate the permitting process because regulators consider cumulative emissions when examining the air quality impact of a proposed development.  

The mayor is instead recommending an unused county airfield off Krome Avenue on the Broward County line near the Everglades. But city officials from nearby Miramar turned up at the September meeting to voice their opposition and threaten to attempt to slow down any permitting process for the airfield site, potentially putting at risk the time-dependent funding the county is looking to secure. 

Miramar Mayor Wayne Messam admonished the county at the meeting for not consulting with his locality on the site selection process and said selection of the site would jeopardize the quality of life for his constituents. 

“Miami-Dade needs a Hail Mary touchdown to clear all environmental and regulatory requirements to design, engineer and begin construction of the mass burn facility by the end of 2024,” he said. “Miramar is prepared to take objection to every permit process at every level, pleading our case to regulators. This potentially will delay your permitting process and put in jeopardy your ability to meet your funding deadlines.”

Messam didn’t respond to Bisnow’s request for comment.  

The third site under consideration is on privately owned land near an existing landfill in Medley and officials have offered little public comment on the pros and cons of building the incinerator there. 

Officials project it will take up to a decade to finish construction and begin operation of a new facility. In the meantime, they are exploring alternative solutions to reduce the cost of shipping trash out of the county to avoid triggering the CDMP rules that would require the county to halt development. 

Miami-Dade County officials are working with Waste Management on a pilot program to use railroad tracks owned by Florida East Coast Railway to ship trash northward to Okeechobee to reduce transport costs and are developing a proposal with CSX to do the same along its transit corridor, Morales said. 

“That would enable us to diversify our disposal capacities right now, as opposed to just trucking,” he said. 

The $65M contract passed Tuesday to begin developing design criteria for a new incinerator is also meant to accelerate the process once a site is selected. 

“My only concern is the time, because we also have the insurance money and whether we’re going to use it and all of that back and forth,” Commissioner Raquel Regalado said at the meeting. “This is when the time gets a little dicey on us.”