By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
After a big build-up to a final decision, the Broward County Commission on Tuesday evening voted unanimously to put off for two months a decision on whether to let Waste Management supersize its Monarch Hill landfill to a height of 325 feet – 20 feet higher than the Statue of Liberty.
About 200 people showed up at County Hall – many bused in by Coconut Creek, the Creek’s large Wynmoor adult community, and Deerfield Beach – to protest the county’s anticipated support for Waste Management’s proposals. So many that an alternate room was opened to accommodate the overflow crowd.
The approximately four dozen speakers were a mix of public officials, residents and representatives of business and environmental groups and included the mayors and the city commissions of Coconut Creek and Deerfield Beach, Monarch Hill’s closest neighbors, as well as the mayor of Southwest Ranches. Nearly all of them asked the county commission to either vote down or postpone the vote on measures that would have altered county land use rules to allow both a 100-foot vertical height increase from its current limit of 225 feet and a related proposal sought by Waste Management to add 24.6 acres to the dump’s footprint.
Those who wanted to delay the vote urged commissioners to wait until the recently constituted Solid Waste Disposal and Recyclable Materials Processing Authority of Broward, also known as the Broward SWA, completes its initial mission of producing a comprehensive 40-year Master Plan, to include what to do about the county’s failed recycling programs.
“The objective is to develop a clear pathway to implement an integrated and sustainable solid waste management system that enables the Solid Waste Authority of Broward County to meet or exceed the state’s 75% recycling goal,” the SWA’s website says. The SWA is made up of 28 cities and the county.
The Master Plan, however, is not expected to be provided to the county until next spring or summer.
HEARING TO BE CONCLUDED JAN. 28
After listening to three hours of sometimes heated remarks the commission took County Attorney Andrew Meyers’s recommendation, offered at the meeting’s outset, to postpone the vote to allow time to hammer out a few needed changes to Waste Management’s proposals.
The rest of the hearing was reset to Jan. 28, the first regular commission meeting of 2025. The public, however, will apparently not be allowed to speak because that portion of the hearing concluded yesterday.
Tuesday’s meeting was held to take up proposals that Waste Management sent to the county in an Oct. 16 letter from Fort Lauderdale lawyer Bill Laystrom that was intended as a “global solution to the disposal of construction and demolition debris and Class III waste (i.e. bulky waste, yard waste, etc.)” that pledged to:
- No longer accept municipal solid waste at Monarch Hill – which accounts for much of its unpleasant odor – after the expiration of its present disposal contract with Pompano Beach on Sept. 30, 2027. Such waste could only be accepted during a declared federal, state or county State of Emergency.
- Assume the cost to transport 35,000 tons per year of the county’s residential and commercial solid waste to alternate waste disposal sites until July 2, 2033.
- Pay a per ton “host fee” to the county for every ton of waste disposed of at Monarch Hill. For construction and demolition waste, $3.50 per ton. For municipal solid waste from Broward, or waste of any nature shipped to Monarch Hill from outside of Broward, Waste Management will pay $6 per ton. The host fee will be in effect for the life of the landfill.
- Waste Management will continue to provide the use of its transfer station network at no charge to the county and participating communities for the transfer of waste to the alternate disposal facility. The company estimated that the value of this service is between $2 million and $2.5 million.
- Waste Management will make an “in-kind contribution” to the Broward SWA’s recycling education program for 10 years, beginning with $500,000 in year one and decreasing gradually until a minimum contribution of $150,000 annually is reached for the duration.
- Waste Management’s new “a state-of-the-art” renewable energy recovery facility under construction at its landfill in Okeechobee, the alternate disposal facility, will capture methane gas generated by decomposing waste, purify it to pipeline gas quality, after which it will be pressurized and injected into a utility pipeline. The company “will then remove the gas from the utility pipelines at each of its hauling companies where it will be used to fuel refuse” garbage trucks “thus completing the recycling and circulatory loop.”
- If Broward chooses to “source separate and transport food waste and organics to the Okeechobee site in the future, Waste Management has agreed to restart the permitted composting facility at Okeechobee landfill and compost…at no incremental cost to the then current disposal rates.”
- At the county’s request, the company will hike its capacity commitment at the alternate disposal facility by 200,000 tons per year to 775,000 tons. And should the county decide to install a wastewater sludge dryer near Monarch Hill, it will agree to work cooperatively to deliver methane gas generated at Monarch Hill to the dryer facility as renewable energy.
The 500-acre Monarch Hill site in unincorporated Broward is bounded on the north by Wiles Road, on the south by Sample Road, on the east by Powerline Road and on the west by Florida’s Turnpike. When it was opened in a sparsely populated area in 1965, Coconut Creek was still two years away from incorporation.
Today, more than 57,000 people call Coconut Creek home.
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