MIRAMAR, Fla. – A cross-county issue involving a waste incinerator has been heating up lately.
Miramar and its broad coalition of supporters is threatening to sue Miami-Dade County if it chooses a site near the Broward city.
Additionally, some Miramar residents are planning to cross the county line to take their concerns to Miami-Dade Commissioners.
So far, city leaders say more than 20,000 people have signed a “Stop the Incinerator” petition.
Miramar Mayor Wayne Messam said the technology that Miami-Dade County plans to use for a new waste incinerator should not be in anyone’s backyard.
After a massive fire torched Miami-Dade County’s incinerator, county leaders have been exploring sites to build a new facility, to include medley, the existing site in Doral and the former Opa-locka west airport site, which borders Miramar and the Florida Everglades.
Miami-Dade County officials want to build the biggest waste-to-energy plant in the country and as the plans are in the works released new conceptual renderings.
“This issue has been brought to Miramar without even consulting us — without even letting us know,” Messam said. “We just happened to find out that the airport westside was being recommended as the site for this 4,000-ton-per-day garbage being burned.”
Messam said the city’s opposition includes litigation. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is helping Miramar since the city’s residents affected are predominantly Black.
“Bringing an incinerator to the Opa-locka Westside is environmental injustice and also racial injustice,” said Elisha Moultrie, of the NAACP.
Miramar City Attorney Michael Goldstein had a message for Miami-Dade County commissioners.
“A vote for this site is an empty, callous choice, nothing will ever come of it, except a solid decade of litigation and tens of millions of dollars of legal fees for the county,” Goldstein said. “This site is legally indefensible, scientifically unsupportable, and morally deficient, and reprehensible.”
A spokeswoman for the office of Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told Local 10 in an email, “We are still in the process of reviewing all proposals. We will keep you posted as soon as there’s an update.”
NAACP’s Elisha Moultrie
Miramar mayor
Miramar vice mayor
Miramar City Attorney Michael Goldstein
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