DEERFIELD BEACH, Fla. – The Monarch Hill Landfill, also known as “Mount Trashmore,” is about 210 feet tall. Trucks collecting Broward County’s garbage started to make dropoffs in 1965.
The 500-acre landfill deals with about 5,000 tons of waste, six days a week. Waste Management expects the site to reach its capacity in six years and wants an expansion.
“Coconut Creek is used as a passthrough of all these trucks that leave debris,” said Coconut Creek Commissioner Joshua Rydell.
Waste Management, the company that operates it, proposed to extend its use for 16 more years. Although Waste Management, associated the landfill with a “renewable energy park,” Rydell said the company doesn’t want to partner with Coconut Creek.
“They don’t want to be a partner in forward-thinking environmental ways. They want to make their landfills bigger, taller, and wider,” Rydell said.
Waste Management wants the landfill to reach 325 feet at the peak, convert the former incinerator to free up 24 more acres, and stop accepting household waste.
The landfill reportedly receives about 90% construction and demolition debris and 10% is household waste. There was frustration in Deerfield Beach.
“We have been giving and giving and giving and we are not getting back,” Deerfield Beach Mayor Bill Ganz said during a meeting after a presentation. “It’s very frustrating when I see this. I don’t know how any of us can be ok with what is being proposed.”
If Broward doesn’t approve the proposal, Waste Management warned the garbage trucks will have to travel to the Okeechobee Landfill and the cost will be nearly $40 million annually.
“There’s a lot of pressure from cities to not expand it. The question is, where do you put it? I think for the near future it makes sense,” Broward County Vice Mayor Beam Furr said. “We have to use that landfill.”
Broward County commissioners will likely have to decide by August or September.