Doral off the hook for county trash incinerator site, but could still be responsible for costs

Juan Carlos Bermudez intends to set concrete guidelines for municipal annexations. Image via Juan Carlos Bermudez.

Miami‑Dade Commissioners have taken Doral off the map for a replacement waste‑to‑energy plant, but the city might not be off the hook for helping to pay for a new one elsewhere.

In a 10-2 vote last week, Commissioners approved a resolution prohibiting construction of a new incinerator within the municipalities Doral, Medley and Sweetwater; the former Opa‑locka West Airport site; or within half a mile of a residential area.

They also ordered staff to process at least 40% of the county’s trash through recycling or composting, rather than combustion.

Juan Carlos “J.C.” Bermudez, the Commissioner who drew up the exclusion plan who previously served as Doral’s founding Mayor, called it a “victory for the residents of Miami-Dade.”

“Whatever new facility we build will not be near residents,” he said.

Anthony Rodriguez, who chairs the 13-member Commission, and Eileen Higgins, the panel’s senior member who is now running for Miami Mayor, voted against the measure.

Rodriguez cited the carve-out for Doral as a key factor, “based on all the factors that have come forward.”

The change doesn’t spare Doral from whatever bill the county faces for building a replacement for the Covanta trash plant that burned to the ground in the city in February 2023.

Commissioners directed Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s administration last Wednesday to negotiate how much the city will reimburse for shifting the project to a pricier site and to appraise the shuttered Doral complex for partial sale or lease.

Roy Coley, Miami-Dade’s Chief Utilities and Regulatory Services Officer, said the county won’t have an idea for how much the new incinerator project will cost until it has a “full design and an exact bid.”

Rodriguez said Doral must pay “their fair share.”

Details on the pending project are fluid and could include multiple facilities, including one large incinerator and a smaller, non-furnace facility to which the ban on city-specific and residentially close sites would not apply.

“It can be fragmented,” said Oliver Gilbert, the Commission’s past Chair and a former Mayor of Miami Gardens. “We’re moving away from the idea that it has to be one campus at this point. So, we’re making it smaller so we’re actually giving ourselves more options and more flexibility.”

Miami-Dade’s trash woes were the subject of legislation that three South Florida Republicans — Sen. Bryan Ávila of Hialeah, Rep. David Borrero of Sweetwater and Meg Weinberger of Palm Beach Gardens — nearly carried across the finish line with help from Fort Myers Republican Sen. Jonathan Martin.

The state legislation, which died one vote shy of passage after the two chambers couldn’t agree on its final language, sought a half-mile buffer between any future incinerator and the nearest home, school or business — a standard similar to the one Miami-Dade just adopted.

Lobbyists Rhett O’Doski and Sean Stafford of McGuireWoods Consulting, working on behalf of Covanta, helped to orchestrate the bill’s defeat in a strategy Florida Politics’ INFLUENCE magazine dubbed the 2025 Session’s “Lobbying Play of the Year.”

High-profile opponents of rebuilding in Doral included Eric Trump, who lobbied against erecting a new facility near his father’s golf course where a Trump Organization company received a city OK in January to build 1,500 condo units.

Environmental concerns continue to drive public pressure. After the old Covanta facility burned for three weeks, county health officials warned residents to stay indoors while ash coated neighborhoods.

Commissioners have given staff 90 days to return with a shortlist of candidate sites. In the meantime, Miami‑Dade continues to ship 2 million tons of garbage out of the county at a cost that in the 2023-24 fiscal year rose to $62 million.