Mayor looks beyond Doral incinerator to manage waste

The county’s waste-to-energy incinerator in Doral might not be rebuilt next door as was planned before an out-of-control February fire put it out of business. In fact, it might not be rebuilt at all, according to Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.

In a memo to area commissioner Juan Carlos Bermudez last week, the mayor wrote that “my administration is looking at the spectrum of solid waste options, including zero waste strategies.” She did not elaborate.

“In the near future,” she wrote, “we will be bringing recommendations and options for the Board of County Commissioners… as we work together to formulate sensible short- and long-term plans for managing the county’s waste.”

Mr. Bermudez in March had asked her to find disposal methods other than a new waste-to-energy plant.

Mayor Levine Cava’s memo detailed that Covanta, which ran the plant under a county contract, in April laid off 64 workers. Covanta Energy wrote to the state that the April 14-28 layoffs are “permanent in nature.” They included hourly operations and maintenance workers and salaried administration.

The search for a waste plant site has for years bedeviled the county, as communities sought to avoid its presence. In the end, commissioners chose to build beside the current plant, which opened in 1982 on 160 acres, long before fast-growing Doral, whose population is now 76,000, was a city. Most of the county’s solid waste was processed there.

The plant handled about 1.1 million tons yearly, shredding it, removing 26,000 tons of metal for recycling, incinerating the balance and reducing its volume by 90%, throwing off enough electricity to power 35,000 homes. The county sold the electricity. The ash was sent to a landfill.

In October 2022, a Covanta contract extension for Resources Recovery Facility service was approved by commissioners without discussion. The aim was to give the county enough time to build a new waste-to-energy plant without affecting solid waste services.

“I don’t even necessarily agree with it without considering other potential sites,” Mr. Bermudez told Miami Today less than two weeks before the fire. “I need to figure out a way to ask my colleagues to at least visit the sites, which will not delay the process because we’re not anywhere near anything that would impact the opening of the facility.”

Other sites that had been considered, besides Doral, included Medley and two locations on Ingraham Highway. The commission, however, chose the Doral site in a bid to spend the least time and money to build.

Before the fire, Doral Mayor Christi Fraga said she was fully on board with Mr. Bermudez’s plans to relocate a new plant away from Doral.

“But we need to be realistic. If that’s not going to happen, if that’s not the direction the county’s going to go in because of the cost,” she said, “then we need to make sure that they are going to rebuild a facility that’s top of the line, that has the best technology, that is taking into consideration, not just the need for a place to process the waste but a place that is safe for our community and the health of our residents.”

“The fire at the [plant] brings special attention to the issue of solid waste management to the county,” Mayor Levine Cava wrote last week.
She included in her memo an incident narrative in which Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Capt. Gerard Forrester wrote, “I conclude that the fire’s cause is classified as ‘accidental.’”