Miami-Dade asks FPL and a rival company to pick sites for a garbage incinerator

After Miami-Dade County’s elected leaders failed to agree on where to build a new garbage incinerator, will the private sector do any better?

In a surprise vote Tuesday, county commissioners set a December date for preliminary approval of a site for building an incinerator plant for burning about half of Miami-Dade’s garbage — trash that’s currently being sent by truck and train to landfills as far away as Central Florida. Like the old incinerator in Doral that was shut down by a fire in early 2023, the new “waste-to-energy” facility would burn trash to create electricity.

Commissioners directed Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to analyze proposals by a pair of competing consortiums — one led by Florida Power and Light and the other by FCC, a global trash-processing conglomerate based in Madrid — and recommend her favorite ahead of the commission’s Dec. 16 meeting.

The legislation, sponsored by Commission Chair Anthony Rodriguez, wasn’t on the published agenda for Tuesday’s meeting, but it passed unanimously after limited discussion. In December, commissioners could accept the mayor’s recommendation or pick the other proposal. Levine Cava would then have five months to negotiate a deal for final board approval by April.

While Tuesday’s vote was a surprise, the head-to-head competition isn’t new. Neither is the uphill path to pick a site for a new incinerator.

In July, commissioners had voted to have Levine Cava start negotiating potential deals with both consortiums, but did not give a deadline at that time. In the same vote, commissioners declared two possible incinerator sites to be off limits moving forward. Those included the Doral site of the county’s former incinerator plant, which President Donald Trump’s family vowed to fight because of its proximity to a Trump golf resort; and an idle county airfield near the Broward County line that’s opposed by nearby Miramar.

It’s not clear what sites FPL or FCC might pitch Miami-Dade or what costs would be involved if the county has to pay for construction of a new incinerator and also to acquire private land to house it.

There’s also the issue of finding a location that won’t bring with it another set of built-in opponents. “We don’t know what sites they’ve chosen,” Commissioner Raquel Regalado said of FPL and FCC, “but that’s going to be the most polemic piece of that.”

After the meeting, Levine Cava said a future incinerator could also be built outside of Miami-Dade County. “We are renewing conversations with other counties,” she said. “If there’s an opportunity to collaborate, we will.”