Looming landfill crisis prompts action

Poor recycling habits stymie progress

On September 6, 2023

As flames spread through Miami-Dade’s massive North Dade Landfill trash incinerator earlier this year in February, destroying the heart of the county’s waste-management system while spreading chemicals through the air, residents could smell, taste and see the results of decades of failed leadership. 

For years, successive mayors and commissions punted on finding long-term solutions to the county’s garbage woes. New residents and tax dollars poured in, but as development surged so did the amount of trash produced, along with the size of sprawling, pungently odorous landfills. 

Now, with the incinerator that burned much of Miami-Dade’s trash inoperable, two landfills nearing capacity and a cash-strapped recycling program drawing political fire, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava faces a potential landfill crisis in the coming years – a challenge with major economic and environmental implications for the county.

Miami-Dade and its 2.7 million residents are hardly alone. Cities and counties across the United States are struggling to divert garbage from ever-expanding landfills, many of which have reached alarming heights. Landfills emit methane, a greenhouse gas that experts say is more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. 

The county hopes to eventually end its reliance on filling the ground with trash, as the fly-attracting dumps also have plenty of other drawbacks. Among them: developers don’t like building near trash mountains busy with trucks and bulldozers, landfills negatively impact air quality and can contaminate soil and groundwater, and they’re often placed near communities of color, where residents tend to have the least amount of political power to fight back. 

Americans are among the most wasteful people in the world when it comes to generating garbage. As a result, scores of U.S. landfills are at or near capacity, leaving local governments scrambling for solutions. 

The Seattle Model 

A rare success refuse-handling story among large cities is Seattle, where the percentage of waste that gets recycled is in the mid-50s – Miami-Dade’s percentage is in the 30s – and education is backed with serious recycling enforcement. 

“There was a commitment, there was political will,” said Susan Fife-Ferris, Seattle’s director of Solid Waste Planning and Program Management. “We have an environmental ethos in our area that really supports this.” 

Seattle has a “pay as you throw” system that charges residents for garbage based on the size of their container, with recycling included in the bundled cost. 

“We believe in educate, educate, educate, but we can fine customers if they don’t do the right thing,” Fife-Ferris said. 

Miami-Dade, which charges a fixed collection fee and relies on warnings rather than fines, hopes to see comparable success. The county depends mostly on landfills to divert waste, but aims to eventually keep 90% or more of its refuse out of landfills and incinerators – a huge undertaking in a place where many struggle to comply with basic recycling requirements. 

“We really need to come together around a more responsible approach to waste,” Levine Cava told The Miami Times. “In that case, it’s a very significant cultural shift not just for recycling, but to reduce our purchase of items that can’t be reused. 

“As a commissioner, I was very frustrated that more was not being done [in waste management] and … urged a more aggressive approach, and I was really stymied by the prior (mayoral) administration from doing more creative things. So I think that this is really … going to be our time to move forward with something more innovative and future-oriented that is truly sustainable.” 

The biggest challenge in Miami-Dade’s multilayered trash conundrum: how to slow the rate of dumping into overburdened landfills the county relies on to keep garbage at bay. The North Dade Landfill, a 135-foot-tall mound just south of the Dade-Broward line, was expected to reach capacity by 2026 before the plant fire. The South Dade Landfill, a 300-acre site near Homestead, was forecast to reach capacity by 2030. 

“Those dates could be accelerated if we do not find alternatives,” Levine Cava wrote in an August memo. “Adding to the urgency is the potentially adverse impact on development and the local economy if we do nothing or fail to act quickly.” 

So far, the county’s solutions mostly involve plans to add landfill capacity, bolster recycling and build a greener incinerator plant near the Everglades. In late August, Levine Cava recommended a height increase for the north landfill and a study of potentially expanding its southern counterpart. 

The county also contracts to dump as much as 1.25 million tons of annual waste in several landfills operated by Waste Management: The Medley Landfill in Miami-Dade, the Monarch Hill Landfill near Pompano Beach and the Okeechobee Landfill. Additionally, Miami-Dade has 500,000 tons of annual waste capacity at Waste Connections’ JED Landfill in St. Cloud. 

Running Out of Space 

Still, the county needs more space. Miami-Dade is talking with CSX, a supplier of rail-based freight transportation, about the possibility of carrying solid waste by train to landfills outside Florida, possibly to Georgia. Levine Cava also wants to contract for an additional 1 million tons of landfill disposal while the county builds its replacement waste-to-energy plant.

The mayor’s top choice for the new plant site is Opa-locka West Airport, a county-owned airfield off Krome Avenue. The facility would help modernize the county’s 40-year-old waste management system and expand its recycling and composting capabilities. 

The mayor’s top choice for the new plant site is Opa-locka West Airport, a county-owned airfield off Krome Avenue. The facility would help modernize the county’s 40-year-old waste management system and expand its recycling and composting capabilities.

The potential landfill expansions and land-filling county trash elsewhere are “not long-term solutions,” said Levine Cava, adding that she doesn’t expect additional expansions. 

But dependence on landfills may be hard to unwind. The county’s options are limited when it comes to waste disposal, said attorney Howard Nelson, chair of environmental practice at Bilzin Sumberg in Miami. 

“There’s waste-stream reduction, there’s turning it into fuel, which is the incinerator model, and then there’s expansion of landfills,” he said. “There’s not a lot of enormously creative ‘Oh, we’ve never thought of that before’ ways of doing it.” 

Room for residents’ garbage was running out even before fire ravaged the county’s Resources Recovery Facility, a waste-to-energy plant operated on the county’s behalf by Covanta Energy. The plant, built in 1985, processed an average of nearly 900,000 tons of waste per year, converting waste into electricity but also generating pollution including ash and foul smells. Refuse processed by the plant amounted to nearly half the waste processed by the county annually, and its shuttering dramatically increased Miami-Dade’s dependence on landfills. 

Without the plant, the county’s Department of Solid Waste Management must find new ways to dispose of trash, not just from unincorporated areas but also from 15 cities with which the county contracts, including Miami. Overall, public and private waste workers picked up more than 5.1 million tons of solid waste in Miami-Dade in 2022, up from nearly 4.6 million in 2021 and around 4.3 million in 2020, according to data from Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection. 

More than 3 million tons of that garbage went to landfills in 2021 and 2022. The county’s solid waste program handles around 40% of the waste generated in Miami-Dade, leaving many municipalities in need of their own long-term solutions. 

Asked about the possibility of organizing a consortium like the one Broward recently formed to manage solid waste and recycling, Levine Cava said “I’m very interested in coordinating solid waste management across the county and even across the region.” 

She said her administration reached out to Broward “to see if they’d be interested in partnering for a new facility.” Given how close the new waste-to-energy plant would be to the county line, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Broward doesn’t become interested,” along with local municipalities. 

‘Recycling Zealot’

Recycling would be a major boon for landfill diversion if more Miami-Dade residents got on board, or at least followed directions. Around 31% of county solid waste picked up in 2022 was recycled, state data show; the number rose to 37% when including renewable energy credits, which can be earned by burning waste for fuel. 

That’s higher than some big cities – different states use different recycling metrics – but lower than national leaders like San Francisco, where around 80% of waste is diverted from landfills, and Los Angeles, at around 76%, as well as many Florida counties, including Palm Beach, which is at 80%. Miami-Dade’s recycling program services around 1 million residents in unincorporated areas as well as numerous municipalities. That’s a broad cross-section of customers hailing from a range of countries and diverse backgrounds, posing a major challenge when it comes to communication. 

“We have people coming from many different places where recycling might not be the norm and it’s not instinctive,” Levine Cava said. 

Among the county’s messier recycling problems: Many residents are throwing nonrecyclable waste into their bins, “contamination” that can render entire loads nonrecyclable. Plastic bags “are the clear enemy,” the mayor said, but state law prevents the county from banning commercial sales of certain single-use plastics and foam. The county’s contamination rate for recycled materials has decreased from 49% in 2020 to 39.9%, and officials hope to “tailor education and outreach messages that address specific contamination issues,” Levine Cava wrote in her August memo. 

The recycling program’s struggles are reflected in a nearly $40 million deficit for waste collection. Inflation and China’s ban on most foreign waste have hit the recycling industry hard, sending county recycling expenditures soaring while turning a once-profitable endeavor into a money loser. To ease the financial crunch, Levine Cava recently proposed a $3 monthly increase to the county’s solid waste collection fee. The move prompted Commissioner Kevin Cabrera to ask fellow board members to immediately cancel the county’s recycling contract. The commission has yet to act on the mayor’s proposal – still more can-kicking on an issue that can no longer wait. 

Dominique Burkhardt, a Miami-based senior attorney with the Florida office of Earthjustice, an environmental law nonprofit, said the county should prioritize a grassroots approach to outreach and instruct people on proper recycling practices in multiple languages using informational fliers, television ads, and community meetings and groups. 

The Solid Waste Management Department currently spends roughly $250,000 a year on education and outreach. Levine Cava said she will push for more funding as part of a broader communications effort on waste and environmental issues. She said she’s also brought on a new sustainability director and a specialized communications official who will help tailor public outreach for recycling. 

“I am a recycling zealot,” the mayor said. 

Warding off a Moratorium 

Levine Cava’s latest moves on the waste front follow the July resignation of Michael Fernandez, the former director of Miami-Dade’s Department of Solid Waste Management. Fernandez sounded the alarm about a possible landfill crisis when he quit, citing a law that mandates the county have five years of garbage disposal capacity before issuing new building permits. In his resignation letter, Fernandez said “the County will have to issue a moratorium to stop all development” if solutions aren’t quickly found. 

Levine Cava’s response: “We knew about the moratorium and the concurrency requirement. We knew that we were facing a timeline when the plant burned down. We immediately got to work … when you put all the [county’s latest plans] together we feel confident that we will not face a moratorium.” 

Burkhardt said the time is ripe to transform the county’s approach to waste. 

“It requires the political will on behalf of our decision makers in Miami-Dade County and it requires recognizing that this will take a cultural shift, and you have to start somewhere and do that work to get there.”

This piece was republished from the Miami Times Online.