A Miami-Dade incinerator? County commissioners get (a little) closer to a decision

Nearly three years after a fire destroyed the Doral incinerator that processed about half of Miami-Dade’s trash, county commissioners want to pursue building a new one in an industrial area near the Broward County line.

Two teams have been competing to build a replacement facility, and both kept their hopes alive on Tuesday after commissioners voted to consider a combined proposal from the current rivals.

Each of the teams proposed building their incinerators in an area off Okeechobee Road, south of the Broward County line. That still puts a future incinerator a couple of miles from the Broward city of Miramar, but not as close as the idle Miami-Dade airport that the county once had picked as the preferred incinerator site.

Both teams boast a high-profile player in local government. One has Florida Power and Light, the influential utility with a long track record on Miami-Dade projects. The other has MasTec, the national infrastructure company based in Coral Gables whose owners, Jose and Jorge Mas, are David Beckham’s partners in the Inter Miami soccer team.

The two teams submitted competing bids for an incinerator expected to cost $2 billion or more to build. One bid has FPL as the lead proposer, while the other comes from Mastec partner FCC Environmental Services, a waste-management company based in Spain.

Only one plan offered a site controlled by the proposer. FPL has an option to purchase a privately owned 65-acre parcel east of Okeechobee Road, between Northwest 178th Street and Northwest 182nd Street. FCC didn’t offer a specific site but said it would build its incinerator somewhere in that “Okeechobee corridor.”

Instead of picking a winner, Commission Chair Anthony Rodriguez said Tuesday he wanted the commission to receive a unified proposal from both teams. Commissioners agreed, approving Rodriguez’s last-minute legislation to request that the two teams negotiate a joint proposal in time for the board’s Jan. 21 meeting.

“The answer might be: ‘We can’t come to an agreement,’” Rodriguez said before the vote. Without a joint proposal, Rodriguez said the commission would move on to picking one of the proposals and resolve the question of whether Miami-Dade actually wants another incinerator in a prolonged fight that’s reached all the way to the White House.

With commissioners holding yet another discussion on next steps toward an incinerator, some board members questioned whether the debate would ever end.

“I’m not sure that I understand this board’s constant and repetitive aversion for making a decision on this topic,” Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins said.

After a fire shut down the nearly 40-year-old incinerator in 2023, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava declined to authorize repairs to reopen it. The initial plan was to build a modern replacement on the site campus in Doral, but that fell apart after President Donald Trump’s win the following year.

The Trump family owns a golf resort in Doral, and son Eric Trump vowed to fight a new Doral incinerator, a project that would require the approval of federal environmental regulators.

With Doral a political no-go zone, commissioners initially considered the idle Opa-locka West airport near Miramar. After that Broward city flooded the commission chambers with angry residents amid promises of a legal fight, the commission voted to eliminate both the airport and Doral from consideration as incinerator sites.

Levine Cava then said Miami-Dade doesn’t need a new incinerator and recommended the continued use of trucks and trains to haul the county’s garbage to landfills nearby and across Florida.

Reports by her administration show the cost of building an incinerator would mean higher rates for homeowners paying Miami-Dade for garbage service. A recent memo from the mayor predicts the current $702 yearly rate for garbage service would increase to as much as $1,300 a year in a decade with a new incinerator, compared to an increase to $995 without one.

Some advocacy groups also are resisting the push for a new incinerator, citing environmental concerns.

“Miami-Dade has a chance to lead Florida into a safer, cleaner, more resilient future; not repeat the mistakes of the past,” said Florida Rising, a progressive group that wants the county to invest in recycling and composting instead of an incinerator.