In the fight over whether to put Miami-Dade’s new incinerator in Doral or near Miramar, a third option gained new life on Tuesday: Medley.
A private owner of a former quarry in Medley hopes to strike a deal for Miami-Dade to build a $1.5 billion incinerator on his land, with the potential of the county swapping property near Miramar that is Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s pick for the new trash-burning facility, a site commonly called Airport West.
“It’s a pretty simple, tenth-grade real estate transaction,” the land owner, Lowell Dunn II, told commissioners near the end of a day filled with public debate over whether to build the incinerator in Doral or on the mayor’s preferred site, an abandoned county airfield less than a mile from Miramar in Broward County. “We want it. … Let’s get going.”
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The Medley option helped derail a final vote by the County Commission that was expected Tuesday, with commissioners choosing to delay the matter until a meeting on Nov. 6. A decision on where to rebuild the county’s trash-burning power plant has been anxiously awaited after the existing facility caught fire at its longtime site in Doral nearly two years ago. Four options have been on the table: the existing site in Doral, a property offered by developer David Martin outside of Hialeah Gardens, the defunct airfield known as Airport West and Dunn’s site in Medley.
While the Levine Cava administration had previously dismissed the Medley site as too costly to acquire and develop, Commission Chair Oliver Gilbert on Tuesday secured another 60 days to consider a deal with Dunn.
The land owner told commissioners he’s interested in turning the county-owned Airport West site into a rock quarry and would be open to swapping his Medley site south of Northwest 106th Street so the county could use it for the incinerator. Dunn said he would be willing to trade the Medley site for other county land, too.
Medley is an industrial hub with a city leadership that has already said it welcomes Miami-Dade building an incinerator there. That’s far from the reaction in Doral, which had been fighting to move the incinerator for years before the fire, and in Miramar, which rented five buses to send more than 100 residents in green “Not in Our Backyard” T-shirts to Tuesday’s meeting in opposition of the Airport West site.
“We cannot afford to compromise on air and water quality in the city that we call home,” said Kerri-Ann Nesbeth, who described herself as a third-generation Miramar resident. “I urge you all to keep looking for alternative solutions.”
Once the Opa-Locka West Airport,the 416-acre airfield the administration now calls Airport West sits off North Okeechobee Road and north of Northwest 186th Street. That’s about 3 miles outside of the county’s Urban Development Boundary (UDB), which serves as a buffer between suburban construction and the county’s wetlands, agricultural belt and other sensitive areas.
Environmental groups, including the Tropical Audubon Society and the Everglades Foundation, have opposed Levine Cava’s plan to build the incinerator at Airport West and instead urged Miami-Dade to pursue waste reduction through recycling, composting and other measures that they insisted could eliminate the need to burn garbage.
“Make your grandchildren and children proud,” said Kaatje Bernabei, a Miami resident wearing a Sierra Club Miami T-shirt, told commissioners. “Look for another solution.”
She was one of about 100 people who spoke on the issue during two hours of public comment, one of the strongest turnouts for a commission meeting in 2024.
Miami-Dade had been burning roughly half of the county’s garbage at the Doral facility since its construction in the early ‘80s. Without the incinerator since the February 2023 fire, Miami-Dade has been shipping garbage north by truck and by train to various landfills, including one in Central Florida.
“The simple truth is: We need a solution,” Levine Cava told commissioners ahead of the late afternoon vote. “Choosing not to choose would only kick the can farther down the road.”
With Doral residents demanding an end to wafting garbage smells and smokestack exhaust, Levine Cava insisted clean-burning technology from a modern facility would all but eliminate those gripes.
She’s visited modern incinerators in Japan, and Miami-Dade commissioners saw them on a recent trip to Europe. The mayor predicted a future Miami-Dade incinerator would be a non-issue for residents, citing examples of an incinerator in Copenhagen that put a public grass ski slope on its roof and one in Japan with a heated pool atop.
“I’ve dedicated my life and career to doing what is best for our people and for the planet,” Levine Cava said. “I take that responsibility extremely seriously.”
Earlier this month, her office released a consultant report that ticked off multiple problems with the Medley site, including that part of it is a filled-in quarry lake with “geotechnical challenges” that could make construction costly.
While Medley is open to an incinerator, the memo said the city also wants yearly fees tied to garbage shipments that would cost as much as $15 million. The memo also noted the Medley site is near residential neighborhoods in not just Doral and Medley, but also in Hialeah and Hialeah Gardens.
The current incinerator site sits within a tenth of a mile of Doral homes, and Levine Cava’s pitch for the Airport West site included the fact that it’s farther away from residential properties than any location under county consideration. The Airport West site is about a half-mile from Miramar’s Sunset Lakes neighborhood.
Wearing aqua “For Clean and Pure Air” T-shirts at Tuesday’s meeting, Doral residents pleaded with commissioners to move the trash-burning facility away from their neighborhoods.
“The choice you face today is easy,” Doral resident Edwin Vale said. With environmental groups opposing the Airport West site, Vale invoked the children who live and play so close to the existing incinerator. “Should we protect raccoons and frogs over kids?”
Raul Gastesi, a Doral city lawyer, said Miami-Dade leaders should side with Doral over Miramar. “Please remember who your constituents are,” he said. “They are the residents of Miami-Dade County.”
After Miami-Dade commissioners voted to defer a final decision until their Nov. 6 meeting, Miramar Mayor Wayne Messam declined to say whether he’s more inclined to have a new rock quarry near his city or a modern incinerator.
Instead, Messam said he predicts Dunn would be more likely to negotiate for taking over other county parcels, potentially leaving the Airport West site vacant.
“I’m encouraged by the fact that there is flexibility that would avoid mass incineration at the Airport West site,” Messam said.
The delay could put Doral in a challenging position, given the Medley site is only 2 miles north from the existing site. County commissioners have already passed a resolution calling for Doral to contribute property-tax dollars toward the cost of building an incinerator elsewhere, with the idea that the city will enjoy a windfall in real estate values from homes that were built up around the existing site.
Doral was open to a deal when the decision seemed to be between keeping the current incinerator site or moving it as far north as possible to the Airport West location, about 8 miles from Doral. Commissioners want $200 million or more over decades from Doral. Now that moving the incinerator only two miles is on the table , Doral may not be so willing to approve big subsidies for the project, Mayor Christi Fraga said.
“I think it’s unfair,” she said after the vote. “It’s asking Doral to write a blank check.”
Part of the deferral vote included a requirement that the Levine Cava administration negotiate a subsidy deal with Doral that could be considered in the final incinerator vote. That could give county commissioners who are inclined to keep the incinerator in Doral the opportunity to point to a weak subsidy offer as justification. “I think there are seven votes to put this back in Doral if the financial contribution is not right,” Gilbert said near the end of the meeting.
During the next 60 days, Fraga needs to win approval from Doral council members for a long-term tax contribution to Miami-Dade — without knowing what location the city would be subsidizing.
“I think if the vote today was for Airport West, we could have had a better start,” she said.
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