Trash talking by commission shreds county mayor’s effort

It’s not so much that Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s final solution to Miami-Dade’s garbage crisis is to just keep doing what we’re doing, sending the stuff out of county to bury in landfills, but that her whole solid waste plan is as solid as swiss cheese.

That’s why she was defensive as commissioners in a rare workshop probed solid waste’s future for hours, showing displeasure with the mayor’s flipflopping since a 2023 fire closed the plant that processed half the county’s solid waste.

The mayor, asked by Commissioner Marleine Bastien last week to talk with her team and return with a new plan, said she stands by her latest position that nobody seems to buy into – but on the other hand she expects commissioners to really decide.

“That to me equates to no recommendation at all,” said Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins.

So, is the mayor’s new aim to continue to ship garbage elsewhere instead of building the state-of-the-art waste-to-energy plant she had touted in three earlier reports really based on all factors, including the environment?

Facing potential costs of residents’ roadblocks or lawsuits over an incinerator site, Mayor Levine Cava responded to questions, “ultimately this is a financial decision.”

Commissioners, however, said they distrust the mayor’s information. They cited failure of her team to give direct answers. And they said the mayor’s latest report, as far too often happens, arrived too late to fully review in advance.

“What’s the cost per ton as it relates to building a landfill or the incinerator?” Commissioner René García asked in one of many exchanges without firm answers. “I do not have a cost per ton because the incinerator is a planning level estimate, not a quote,” replied Roy Coley, who oversees the solid waste department.

In the mayor’s defense, waste has no easy solution. It’s complex. Nobody wants solid waste anywhere nearby. Costs are rising. The mountain of garbage is only going to get higher as population grows and recycling lags. And the Trump family has a horse in the race in Doral.

But as President Harry Truman’s desk sign read, “The buck stops here.” On tough questions, the mayor should lead decisively. 

“I understand the opposition from every site,” said Sen. García. “But sometimes we have to bite the bullet, and if we make a decision we make a decision and we go with it.”

Now the commission, not the mayor, grapples with multiple dimensions of waste, discussing 13 separate measures on other facets of the issue last week.

Weakening the mayor’s stance, commissioners expressed shock in learning that after they bit the bullet last July to raise $547 household solid waste collection costs to $697 a year, the fee for garbage disposal after collection isn’t enough to cover costs.

“We said the fee should match the service,” Commissioner Oliver Gilbert III said of that July vote. The solid waste department’s current plan “is almost malpractice, because that means that you’re going to recommend a fee to this commission that does not actually pay for the system that we have to operate…. It builds in an assumption of bad government.”

Commissioners also bristled as the mayor responded to questions that though the old waste-to-energy incinerator burned two years ago, the county since had not looked at how it would finance any new solid waste choice that it recommended.

“We have brought you the best information that we could find, including scientific information, and we have produced to the best of our ability costs estimates,” Mayor Levine Cava said. “Basically, anything costs money. Who would finance it is a decision, I believe, once we’ve decided the path forward.”

So, the mayor said that her recommendation to send garbage to landfills elsewhere by truck and rail is a financial decision but commissioners should decide before they know how to finance it. Sounds as sensible as buying a car first and figuring out afterward how to pay for it.

No, commissioners were told, in two years the county has not examined public-private partnerships in the equation, nor has it looked at all possible revenues from waste. Commissioner Raquel Regalado called for a “portfolio of options.”

Commissioners agreed users’ cost of solid waste disposal is going to rise, but they questioned whether all the costs should fall on users’ backs. They got no answers. “The recommendation from the administration would seem to be the most expensive for the ratepayers over time,” Mr. Gilbert said.

Commissioners also called again for a comprehensive solid waste master plan. “We never got the master plan,” said Ms. Regalado. “We’re being told ‘we’re working on this, we’re working on that.’”

“I’m not going to vote just for a landfill. I’m not going to vote just for composting. I’m not going to vote for anything that’s not comprehensive in nature,” said Sen. García. “And I sure am not going to vote for anything that does not include waste to energy,” which would have come from the incinerator that the mayor’s latest position eliminates.

“As we sit here today it concerns me that this becomes the legacy of this commission – an inability to make a decision that is not for the next five years of Miami-Dade County but for the next 50 years,” Ms. Cohen Higgins said.

Commissioners now hope to decide on at least landfill vs. waste plant and a fistful of relevant side issues by month’s end. 

It won’t be a regional solution because Broward County – through which garbage passes to landfills and whose residents packed the audience – was not in the conversation. The mayor’s team said a regional solution that the commission has been calling for was never explored.

The administration is urging action. A deadline is pending for the county to collect anywhere from $60 million to $280 million from insurance on the burned-out plant, and state law requires the county to have at least five-year waste disposal capacity or hit construction roadblocks.

“It is galling for us to hear that we have to make the decision now when you’re on the third recommendation that keeps changing,” Mr. Gilbert told the mayor’s team. “We haven’t been necessarily the problem in making the decision now – that hasn’t been us.”

The county’s landfill use deals to the north in Florida could handle its solid waste for 30 years and a contractor asserts that it could last 100 years, Mr. Coley told commissioners, who sought missing details. They need answers quickly, as well as costs and availability of developing a county-owned landfill elsewhere.

In the end, it’s the commissioners who must make the hard decision. The mayor, as she made clear, will simply have to carry out what they decide.  

Pray that the commissioners know their own minds better than the mayor has shown in four conflicting recommendations.