Miramar mayor warns Miami-Dade of a potential legal battle over trash-incinerator plans

Miramar Mayor Wayne Messam on Tuesday warned Miami-Dade county commissioners of his city’s willingness to pursue a legal fight to prevent a new trash incinerator from being built just outside the city’s boundary line.

“Miramar will file suit,” he vowed to them during a public meeting. And that could “trigger a decade of litigation,” he said.

The Miami-Dade County Commission made no decision about the incinerator location Tuesday. Instead, it accepted a report that studied risk assessments to air quality, human health and ecological screenings to three possible locations for an incinerator, also known as a boiler, which burns trash. The new plant would replace one in Doral that was destroyed in a fire last year.

But Miramar officials worry the report favors the one site they don’t want: the site of a decommissioned airfield, near Krome Avenue and U.S. 27, less than a mile from Miramar’s doorstep. Other options are in Medley, where Miramar wants to see it built, and the existing site in Doral.

Messam said the report “puts (the) thumb on scale of initial recommendation.”

“Each of the three sites appear feasible for air permitting, although the Medley site will be ‘the most complicated and challenging,’ ” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava wrote her commissioners in an April memo. She also told them that the worst-case health risk level at all three sites “is below the risk posed by simply walking down the street and inhaling car exhaust.”

Next for Miami-Dade: “Community outreach regarding the analysis and findings” with impacted cities, communities, and organizations. There could be a site recommendation in September when the commission returns from summer break, and Miami-Dade leaders could make a decision.

Messam told Miami-Dade leaders at the public meeting that “the county could not have picked a more inappropriate location.”

After the meeting, he said the airport site “puts the region at risk” and “it’s unconscionable we’re even here having this conversation.”

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He said if there were ever an accident, the damage to the Everglades and the Broward communities would be “unforgiveable.”

“The site poses extreme human risk, biological risk and environmental risk to our quality of life. Airport West sits across the street from the Everglades, water basins that feed our drinking supply,” Messam said.

The Airport West site is in the northwest portion of Miami-Dade County, and made up of 416 acres, but 377 acres consist of wetland preserve areas. The county is proposing to develop about 180 acres.

Miami-Dade’s new mass Waste-to-Energy plant would process 4,000 tons of waste daily.

The expert study concludes that “the Airport West site yielded slightly better results in the preliminary air dispersion modeling and appears to be relatively more favorable for air permitting than the other two sites.”

Still, the experts warn, for each site, there will be “extensive” permits that will be required for a new incinerator and it “will potentially be longer and more costly than initially expected given the current regulatory environment.”

In an email statement Tuesday afternoon to the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Miami-Dade Chief Operating Officer Jimmy Morales said regarding the human health risks, the study shows the Airport West location has the lowest potential risk, but “all three locations have low risk with results within or below the regulatory established risk levels” and “when looking at ecological risks, the potential risks are also minimal and do not present a health risk to the surrounding communities.”

“The decision about where to place a new Waste-to-Energy facility is an important one that will help shape the future of our community,” he said in the statement. “That’s why the administration is making sure to approach this process as methodically as possible — with the opportunity for thorough evaluation of all possible sites, information-sharing and input from key stakeholders across the community.”

He said Miami-Dade County also has been seeking input from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

In February, Miramar hired a Coral Gables-based environmental law firm to monitor local, state and potentially federal permits that Miami-Dade was pulling and “ensure our rights are protected and we are involved, informed and can be involved in that process should it be required,” Messam said.

Then last month, several cities in southwest Broward stood united against the new facility and urged the public to back them up by signing an online petition.

Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at lhuriash@sunsentinel.com. Follow on X, formerly Twitter, @LisaHuriash