On Tuesday, the Broward County Commission will vote on a series of contentious proposals that would expand the Monarch Hill Landfill, locally known as Mount Trashmore.
The proposals were deferred at a meeting in November after nearly four hours of public comments, many from residents of Coconut Creek and Deerfield Beach — which border the site — who are opposed to the expansion.
The proposals would allow for the height of the landfill to increase to 325 feet — an increase of 100 feet — and for its horizontal footprint to be expanded by almost 25 acres.
Broward County produces more than 9 billion pounds of waste each year. Only around 30% of that waste is recycled, the rest ends up in landfills like Monarch Hill.
READ MORE: Broward commissioners defer vote on expansion of Monarch Hill Landfill
Waste Management, who operates the landfill, says that the site only has about six years of use left at its current size. They say the sooner the expansion, the better.
But the county’s Solid Waste Authority, an intergovernmental group composed of representatives from Broward’s municipalities, disagrees. They’re currently developing a Regional Solid Waste Management and Recycling Master Plan and Mike Ryan, chair of the executive committee, says the vote should be deferred again until the plan is finished.
“ What's the risk of waiting six months to have these really intense discussions within a broader effort? To bring these commodities that we know as solid waste together and decide, do we really need to do that?” he said.
County Mayor Beam Furr disagrees.
“ They've already said from the get-go there will always be a need for a landfill. Every form of recycling that you use has residue. Residue has to go somewhere,” he said.
In addition, Waste Management has made a number of concessions if the county agrees to the expansion proposals. Most crucially, those include only using the landfill for construction and debris waste moving forward — which would eliminate the organic matter that currently causes the noxious smell the site is known for.
That organic matter would be shipped up to Waste Management’s landfill in Okeechobee, where they’ve agreed to either compost or use methane-capture technology to lessen the county’s impact on the climate.
“ Methane is like 80 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. So, knowing that, I think it's incumbent upon us to figure out, what do we do? What's our responsibility?” said Furr.
But those concessions don't move the needle for vocal critics like Deerfield Beach Mayor Bill Ganz, whose city borders Monarch Hill.
“ They have the ability to do that now. The bottom line is they could, but it's going to cost them money and they don't want to do that,” he said.
Broward County Vice Mayor Mark Bogen, whose district includes Deerfield Beach and Coconut Creek, has said he’ll be voting against the measures. He has been frustrated by Waste Management's failure to keep its previous commitments.
“ Every chance they can, they want to expand. It's a huge profit center for them. I understand what they're doing,“ he said.
Over a decade of impasses
The urgency of the vote and dwindling useful life left at the Monarch Hill site has been exacerbated by more than a decade of failed governmental cooperation, corporate wars and even global economics.
In 1991, Broward’s Resource Recovery Board was born out of an interlocal agreement between the county and 26 municipalities. The Board had what's called “flow control”. That means the county was in control of the way waste moved through its system. Waste was first recycled — what couldn’t be recycled was burned and what couldn’t be burned was landfilled. This process was significantly more efficient. Furr says the county was recycling more than 60% of its waste then.
At the time the county had two waste-to-energy plants. One, now called the Wheelburator site, is on US 441 near I-595, the other was on the Monarch Hill site, operated by Waste Management. Waste-to-energy plants are commonly referred to a incinerators and are a type of recycling because the burned waste produces electricity.
The Resource Recovery Board operated until July of 2013 when its interlocal agreement expired. Since then, distrust between municipalities and the county caused cities to look elsewhere for cheaper alternatives. Some sent their waste to Palm Beach, others signed contracts with a company called Sun-Bergeron.
Sun-Bergeron was a joint venture between Davie businessman and political heavyweight, Ron Bergeron and Sun Recycling. 17 municipalities signed up with Sun-Bergeron who promised cheaper rates than Waste Management.
In response to losing the contracts, Waste Management demolished its waste-to-energy plant, citing lack of profit motive to keep it open. Waste Management later bought Sun Recycling’s parent company became a subcontractor on Sun-Bergeron’s contracts. They eventually won all of those contracts back.
“That put us in a position where now we only have one waste energy plant. And when that happened, our landfill rates skyrocketed and our recycling rates plummeted,” said Furr.
A few years later, Ryan says a disruption the the Chinese recycling market further impacted the county. ”We would sell to Chinese companies that were taking it back dead head on ships and they were taking almost everything. And, and at some point that just stopped,” he said.
Recycling down by more than half
All that meant that in the five years since the resource recovery board dissolved, the county was recycling less than half of its previous rate. Less recycled waste meant more waste into the landfill.
“ There was a recognition that this is not sustainable amongst 31 municipalities in a highly broken system,” said Ryan.
In 2019, a new interlocal agreement was created to remedy the issue of solid waste disposal. Over the next five years municipalities slowly agreed to sign on to the Solid Waste Authority. Last May, the board began developing the Regional Solid Waste Management and Recycling Master Plan which looks to plan out the future of waste disposal in the county with an emphasis on reaching zero waste.
Now the county and the municipalities find themselves on opposing sides.
Members of the Solid Waste Authority worry that if the expansion is approved, that it will limit the plan’s effectiveness and take future options off of the table.
“ We’re asking the county to put a pause on this, not to vote it down, but rather to table the matter as being premature so we can have a discussion ... In the last 60 years, there's never been this broad public discussion with all of the stakeholders at the table, and we only get one chance to really get this right,” said Ryan.
The Broward County Commission meets Jan 28.
