Doral mayor to county: Don’t extend lease at odoriferous Covanta recycling plant
Nearly every day during the 23 years Ana Piernavieja has lived in her Doral Isles home, she embarks on a late afternoon walk around the 1.5-mile perimeter of the lake in the center of the gated community.
But on some days of the week, when the wind hits the nearby Covanta Waste Energy Facility just right, Piernavieja, 54, has to turn around and go home.
“You know when you forget the trash and you keep it for two weeks and you open the can? That is pretty much what you are smelling,” she said. “It is very intense. It’s a nasty smell. It’s invasive and disturbing.”
Piernavieja has called the city’s 311 hotline to report the stench, spoken to friends and even toured the Covanta facility. She is among the hundreds of residents each year who complain so frequently that the Doral mayor now wants Miami-Dade County to end its lease with the recycling facility near Northwest 69th Street and 97th Avenue, where an incinerator burns over a million tons of garbage each year.
“The Covanta facility operations are egregiously impacting the quality of life of the adjacent Doral communities,” Mayor Juan Carlos Bermudez wrote in an August 11 letter to Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava. “If Covanta’s lease is extended the noxious odors will continue to deteriorate the quality of life of Doral’s residents.”
An expiring lease and a looming extension
The Covanta plant, which was built in 1985, opened 18 years before Doral incorporated as a city. The plant reduces solid waste that would otherwise go into the landfill by burning it to ash and converting the waste to energy. Because it’s a county-owned site, Doral has no legal authority to regulate Covanta’s operations
The lease on the facility’s property is scheduled to expire October 31, 2023, but will automatically be extended for up to 20 years if the county doesn’t take action by October 31, 2022.
In his letter, Bermudez argues that since the county already delivers solid waste to the Okeechobee Landfill west of Fort Pierce, the county could streamline the waste there and save money that would go toward retrofitting the Covanta facility or building a new facility, which could cost $1 billion.
Bermudez, who counts himself among the residents affected by the odor, said he has not yet received a response to his letter, but hopes to meet with Levine Cava soon.
“I think the most important thing for me is this is not just a Doral issue. It impacts the county in general,” said Bermudez, who is running for the Miami-Dade County Commission in 2022. “I think that with today’s technology and opportunities that exist … there is a better way to do it to benefit the residents of Miami-Dade County than putting money into a very, very old facility.”
Ending the lease for Covanta and moving the trash elsewhere isn’t so simple, Levine Cava says.
There are environmental concerns associated with trucking the trash 135 miles to the Okeechobee Landfill, which county officials estimate would add approximately 100,000 round trips a year. The county has sustainability targets, Levine Cava said, and turning half of the county’s trash into energy falls in line with those goals.
She said, however, that the future of solid waste in Miami-Dade County is still up for discussion and that the Board of County Commissioners will be exploring other options in the coming months.
“We welcome an opportunity to continue collaborating with Mayor Bermudez, the city of Doral and its residents, and all stakeholders on a solution that maintains quality of life for our residents while also ensuring we are processing waste in a manner that meets our sustainability goals and protects our environment,” she wrote in a statement.
Levine Cava said that the county has also been working alongside Covanta to put into place odor control systems to address some of the concerns raised by residents.
Covanta spokeswoman Nicolle Robles wrote in an email that the plant has been “a centerpiece in the County for over 35 years” and “looks forward to our continued collaboration with the County in its waste-disposal strategies.”
Not just Doral
The smells that permeate parts of Doral aren’t exclusive to the Covanta facility. In nearby Medley, scents from the landfill operated by Waste Management off Northwest 93rd Street and 89th Avenue waft across city lines. Doral officials have fielded hundreds of complaints from residents who catch a whiff.
In 2017, Doral created a task force of residents who held public meetings to collect data and make recommendations to city officials and in January 2018, the city submitted a formal complaint against both the landfill and Covanta facility to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
Later, the city voted unanimously to drop its challenge of the Medley landfill’s permit from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to expand the site, and the landfill agreed to a 12-point plan to diminish the smell.
Odor has been an issue in Doral for years, with complaints consistently coming in through the city’s 311 line. And while the most common sources of frustration were the Medley landfill and the Covanta facility, the city has tried to curb other stinky smells from offending the senses. In 2015, Doral approved a citywide ordinance that would penalize residents and businesses if they cannot control odors coming from their property. The proposal passed unanimously.
Frank Gamez, 27, grew up in Doral and now serves as the chairman of the city’s Environmental Advisory Board, a five-member board that meets monthly to discuss issues in the city.
One of the most common concerns his board hears from residents, Gamez said, is noxious odors and the unsightly Covanta plant.
“They can see the chimneys. For the vast majority of the residents of Doral, they are very fed up and frustrated,” he said. “A lot of people have put pressure on the mayor and the city council to do something about it.”
Gamez said while he acknowledges that the city has very little power to address the odors from Covanta, he is pleased that the mayor is calling on the county to not renew the lease.
“That’s the only legal mechanism they have moving forward.”