As Miami-Dade’s incinerator debate drags on, a new idea emerges: take on Donald Trump

Should fear of President Donald Trump prevent Miami-Dade County from building a garbage incinerator a few miles from his Doral resort? At least one county commissioner doesn’t think so.

“I’m not afraid of the Big Bad Wolf,” Commissioner Keon Hardemon, a Democrat from Miami, said Wednesday at the latest commission meeting on whether to replace the Doral incinerator closed from a 2023 fire. “Because a man was elected into office and he supposedly has some sort of magical power to keep us from making decisions that are in our own best interests — I don’t understand that.”

Hardemon’s comments were a rare example of a county official addressing perhaps the biggest challenge facing Miami-Dade’s trash plans. That’s the unspoken assumption that the president will oppose any plan to build a garbage-burning facility in Doral, which consultants say is the cheapest place to build a replacement for an incinerator that used to burn nearly half of the county’s trash every day.

Trump himself has not weighed in publicly about Miami-Dade’s incinerator debate, but his son has — and forcefully. Weeks after his father won the 2024 presidential election, Eric Trump, who runs the president’s resort business, began urging county commissioners to reject Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s recommendation to rebuild the incinerator in Doral. Levine Cava soon backed off her plan, saying she wanted to rethink the environmental upside to burying in landfills the roughly 4 million tons of trash Miami-Dade manages each year.

The county didn’t appear any closer to a final plan on Wednesday when commissioners voted to delay a decision again until Levine Cava’s administration can analyze potential incinerator proposals from the private sector.

That report is expected by June, setting up another hypothetical showdown on the incinerator question in July, according to the schedule laid out by Chair Anthony Rodriguez, a Republican representing parts of western Miami-Dade.

While Trump’s name is rarely mentioned during incinerator debates, on Wednesday the presidential factor started getting some official attention.

Commissioner Eileen Higgins, also a Democrat from Miami, said she was eager to see what private companies might propose for the six potential incinerator locations county consultants have already analyzed.

“There’s enough information out there about these sites,” she said. “Obviously, the president is involved in Doral, so — note to self — probably don’t get involved with that. If you have any common sense, don’t do that.”

The vote to focus on private-sector proposals tees up the public phase of what’s so far been closed-door lobbying by companies eager to win a county contract to build and operate an incinerator expected to cost close to $2 billion. Multiple commissioners cited Florida Power & Light as interested in making a deal with Miami-Dade for an incinerator, which burns trash and produces electricity in the process.

“We all know who the players are,” Rodriguez said to a chambers peppered with lobbyists and executives from waste-management companies, including Reworld, which ran the old Doral incinerator under a county contract. “I see some of them in the audience today.”

While companies may be eager for an incinerator deal, it’s not clear the private route will make it easier for commissioners or Levine Cava to settle on a politically palatable site. Miramar, a Broward County city, led the opposition to the mayor’s prior pick of an idle county airfield in northern Miami-Dade. Hialeah Gardens pushed back on the brief consideration of a private incinerator site near there.

Levine Cava, a Democrat reelected to a second term last August, left the Wednesday meeting just before the incinerator discussion began.

Last month, she released a memo recommending commissioners ditch the prior incinerator plans and instead continue using private landfills across Florida to take the trash that was previously burned in Doral. As Miami-Dade’s two public landfills are expected to fill up in the coming years, the Levine Cava plan would have the county hauling almost all of its trash to other counties by truck or by train.

The Trump factor brings two main obstacles to the possibility of another Doral incinerator being approved by an officially nonpartisan commission where Democrats hold a one-seat margin. The first is Trump’s political sway in a county he carried by 11 points in November — including wins in 10 of the 13 commission districts. The other is regulatory. Even if commissioners approved a Doral incinerator, insiders privately doubt the Trump administration would green-light the federal permits required to build it.

Hardemon tried to deflate that speculation with his comments, noting the approval process is likely to face enough delays that Trump’s presidency may not even be a factor.

“I don’t think that this county should engage in politics out of fear … and to have the approval of someone who is only going to be in office for four years,” he said. “For us to not move forward because the fear of some boogeyman is imminent — I think is laughable.”

With commissioners declining to pick between Levine Cava’s landfill route and the original incinerator option, some board members doubted that having another report completed by this summer would move them closer to resolving a debate where the complications stretch all the way to the White House.

“This sounds like deja vu again,” said Commissioner Marleine Bastien, a Democrat who represents parts of Miami and its northern suburbs. “If we don’t have the courage to act, we will come back to the same place.”

This story was originally published February 19, 2025 at 6:14 PM.