As landfills near an overflow, waste advisory board sought

Written by Miami Today on February 18, 2026

As commissioners wrestle with who will replace Miami-Dade’s incinerator that burned out three years ago and where to put it, they’re being asked to create an advisory team to deal with an even broader range of garbage concerns.

On this week’s commission menu is a call to name a solid waste advisory board to deal with the issues over the next five years.

Among dilemmas René García’s item lists are dealing with rapidly filling landfills and the specter of meeting state demands to show solid waste capacity as a prerequisite for issuing development permits in our growth-driven economy.

The plan for an advisory board is being piled onto commissioners’ plates for the first time. If they approve, they would have to wait six weeks before hearing the issue. Also, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava would have to report on creation of a new county board.

Meanwhile, commissioners grind toward a decision on who will build and run an incinerator and where. They debated that last week with no votes taken.

Cost of the waste-to-energy plant, its scope and when it could open are also up in the air, as is whether two firms can agree on working together or they will compete for a county contract.

“Until we give them clear direction we can’t hold them to an exact date,” Roy Coley, chief utilities and regulatory services officer, told commissioners last month.

FCC Environmental Services and Florida Power & Light Co. separately offered to build the waste center. The commission told them to work out a consortium. If a joint deal fails, the county is to work with each independently to pick a developer. If they unite, a full proposal is due to commissioners in April.

How an advisory board could fit into that mix is unclear, since even a hearing on it couldn’t be held until April and a final vote could come only after that. That could mean commissioners would solidify a waste campus site, a developer and a cost well before an advisory board could be seated.

But Sen. García’s legislation is broader. It points out that the county also operates three landfills and three regional transfer stations and processes and disposes of 2.4 million tons of solid waste annually, including from 15 cities with which the county has long-term disposal contracts.

After the facility in Doral burned out three years ago, the legislation notes, the need to handle the bulk of our waste in other ways “has compressed the timeline in which the county’s landfills reach full capacity, with the North Dade and South Dade landfills projected to reach capacity in 2026 and 2030, respectively.”

The legislation says the current strategy of handling waste “is not sustainable in the long term” because of the cost of hauling much of it out of the county for burial, how long site selection for a new incinerator site has taken, and “the rapidly declining disposal capacity of the county’s landfills.”

The aim of an advisory board, the legislation says, is to help the commission develop a strategy to deal with the issue in a “holistic, comprehensive, and long-term waste management solution that is both financially and environmentally sustainable.”

The advisory board would have 15 voting members, with each commissioner, the mayor and the Miami-Dade County League of Cities naming one. All 15 would have to be chosen from a menu of 10 preferred backgrounds. The legislation doesn’t explain how independent choices would ensure that all 10 categories would be covered.