Miami-Dade’s trash chief resigns after warning that a landfill crisis is coming

Miami-Dade County’s trash chief submitted his resignation this week with a warning: the county will need to declare a moratorium on construction next year if it can’t find new places to put its garbage after a February fire shut down its incinerator plant in Doral.

Mike Fernandez, Solid Waste director under Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, said in a letter Monday that he’s resigning his post “with a heavy heart.” He then laid out a series of decisions that have stalled while the county risks running short of the five years of waste-disposal capacity needed to approve future housing projects across Miami-Dade.

“At this point, the County will have to issue a moratorium to stop all development in Miami-Dade County or initiate the plans that were suggested in the past, that would increase disposal capacity,” Fernandez wrote to Levine Cava in a letter giving his two-week notice for a post he’s held since 2019.

County laws require Miami-Dade have the landfill space and disposal facilities to absorb five years of projected growth in trash collection in order to approve land-use changes needed for new residential and commercial projects outside of city limits.

READ MORE: Miami-Dade used COVID relief funds to rescue trash budget. Now fees are going up

Fernandez’s abrupt departure robs Levine Cava of a veteran of Miami-Dade’s Solid Waste Department at a time of maximum stress for the agency.

The fire that shut down the privately run incinerator plant in Doral upended the county’s disposal system. It had burned more than half of the trash county trucks pick up on a given day.

The calamity forced Miami-Dade to divert garbage to landfills in and out of the county, accelerating the timeline of when the department will run out of space for more trash.

While Fernandez said Solid Waste recommended replacing the current incinerator with a modern facility about two years before the fire. Levine Cava hasn’t submitted a plan on what to do next. The mayor had planned to make a recommendation in June, but that’s now delayed until September.

In a statement Tuesday, Levine Cava’s deputy chief of staff, Rachel Johnson, said the administration is “working with all stakeholders” to tackle both the short-term issue of a disabled incinerator plant that was burning nearly a million tons of trash a year being inoperable, and the long-term needed for a modern, ecological strategy for solid waste in the long-term.

“We look forward to sharing more updates on these plans in the weeks and months ahead,” the statement read. In a June 21 memo, Levine Cava said a new and modern incinerator plant “is desperately needed” and would likely cost $1.2 billion to build.

On Wednesday, Levine Cava sent a memo to commissioners naming an immediate replacement at Solid Waste and said Fernandez would be leaving immediately rather than on the July 14 departure date in his resignation letter. Olga Espinosa-Anderson, a deputy under Fernandez, will serve as interim director while the administration searches for a permanent replacement, Levine Cava said.

“I am confident in Olga’s leadership and the ability to usher the department forward during this transitional period,” Levine Cava wrote. “As we know, our solid waste system faces significant challenges that were exacerbated by the waste-to-energy plant fire earlier this year.”

The first Solid Waste decision facing county leaders are trash collection rates for the budget year that begins Oct. 1.

Levine Cava and county commissioners used COVID stimulus funds to plug a budget gap this year in Solid Waste, and the mayor recently proposed borrowing money from the agency’s reserves to patch part of another $39 million deficit and minimize a fee hike for residents in 2024. While an annual increase of $116 for the 300,000 households along the county garbage routes is needed to close the gap, Levine Cava recommended an increase of just $36 for the budget year that begins Oct. 1. A commission vote is expected later this month.

Commissioner Raquel Regalado said Thursday that Fernandez’s resignation only complicates a challenging situation for the county’s garbage system.

“We have a crisis when it comes to solid waste. We need to deal with it,” she said. “Now, in the middle of a crisis, we have to find new leadership.”

In his memo, Fernandez laid out multiple decisions he said need to be made soon:

▪ Fix the Doral facility: Run by the for-profit company Covanta under a county contract, the Doral incinerator hasn’t been functioning since the fire. Doral residents, including the commissioner representing the area, Juan Carlos Bermudez, want the incinerator moved to avoid the odors and truck traffic that come with the trash-burning operation. Fernandez said Miami-Dade needs a “partial reopening” of the facility to help extend landfill capacity past the five-year mark needed to avoid a construction moratorium.

▪ Approve a long-term plan for garbage: Fernandez wrote that Solid Waste sent a proposed master plan for trash facilities and infrastructure to Levine Cava in March 2022 but that no action was taken. The plan included constructing a modern incinerator facility paired with a county-owned recycling plant, built either in Doral or elsewhere. Fernandez wrote the plan “should be presented to Board of County Commissioners for their review and approval. It is important for the Board and the public to understand the importance of solid waste and the challenges that are to come.”

▪ Expand the landfills: Fernandez said Levine Cava has recommendations to expand the county’s two landfills, one in the northern part of Miami-Dade and one in the southern part. In her June 21 memo recommending the fee hike to commissioners, Levine Cava cited needed expansions of both landfills as reasons to boost revenue for Solid Waste, but there was no timeline on when the projects could start. Fernandez said he recommended approval of the North Dade landfill expansion in 2021.

“Once completed, I recommend exploring an expansion of the South Dade Landfill for additional revenues and capacity,” he wrote. “Additional landfill capacity will keep disposal costs stable, in turn providing less expensive waste collection and disposal services to our residents and businesses.”