COVID hits Miami-Dade’s garbage department, and some cans left uncollected in driveways
A surge of COVID-19 cases sweeping through Miami-Dade County is colliding with the regular spike in garbage after the Christmas holidays, leaving some full trash cans on driveways as the county’s sanitation department struggles with staff shortages this week.
Some county garbage routes scheduled for Tuesday pickups were skipped, with Miami-Dade’s Department of Solid Waste Management saying the remaining cans will be emptied Wednesday morning.
The department blamed the skipped routes on two factors.
The first: unusually full garbage cans due to the Christmas holiday, making it harder for drivers to have extra time to cover open shifts. The second: an unusual number of open shifts caused by drivers out due to COVID-19, be it for illness or quarantine related to exposure to the virus.
When will my garbage get picked up in Miami-Dade?
“You have all of that in play at one time,” Gayle Love, a spokesperson for Solid Waste, said Tuesday afternoon. “The absences, in addition to the extra waste out there, is creating a little bit of a delay. But we’ll be out there tomorrow morning to cover any route that wasn’t covered today.”
Miami-Dade provides garbage pickup for all areas outside of city limits, as well as contract service for 10 municipalities: Aventura, Cutler Bay, Doral, Miami Gardens, Miami Lakes, Opa-locka, Palmetto Bay, Pinecrest, Sunny Isles Beach and Sweetwater.
Love said administrators don’t expect to see more pickup delays during the rest of the week, given how garbage service works in Miami-Dade. More than 350,000 customers using county garbage services have pickups either on Tuesdays and Fridays or on Mondays and Thursdays. Of those, all but Aventura, Pinecrest and Sunny Isles Beach are on Tuesday-and-Friday garbage schedules.
COVID and garbage trucks in Miami-Dade
Because the county’s Christmas holiday fell on Friday, Dec. 24, households awaiting pickups on Tuesday had missed a day’s service ahead of the crush of boxes, wrapping paper and kitchen waste that’s typically generated over Christmas.
“It’s stuff that packs up the trucks quicker than normal,” said Joel Hernandez, president of AFSCME Local 3292, which represents Solid Waste employees in Miami-Dade. “Your tonnage gets high pretty quickly.”
Joe Martinez, a Miami-Dade commissioner who represents the West Kendall area, said his office received complaints from homeowner groups across his district about garbage cans left uncollected on Tuesday. “Mine is still outside,” he said.
With Friday a holiday, the county schedule left drivers on Tuesday routes to collect seven days worth of garbage in a week that included the Christmas refuse — leaving less time to cover other routes. Hernandez said it’s unsafe to run garbage collection at night, leading the county to delay some pickups until Wednesday.
The Monday-Thursday routes didn’t see service disrupted last week, so drivers were better able to compensate for mounting COVID absences by working overtime to cover for missing drivers, Love said.
Still, more COVID-19 absences are bound to stress staffing as the surge caused by the omicron variant shows no signs of slowing down.
Miami-Dade continues to see a spike in COVID-19 cases, with the county’s seven-day average of positive COVID tests hitting 24% on Tuesday, according to the Dec. 28 COVID dashboard produced by the mayor’s office. That means roughly one in four COVID tests are coming back positive countywide.
Love said about 17% of the county’s 106 garbage routes on Tuesday lacked drivers, largely due to COVID absences that weren’t as much of a factor last week. “We’re starting to see an uptick in the number of people who are sick,” she said.
This story was originally published December 28, 2021 at 7:12 PM.