Florida Waste Company Seeks to Close Incinerator, Transfer Trash

- by Brit­tany Wall­man, Decem­ber 9, 2014, Sun Sen­tinel

Neigh­bors of the “Mount Trash­more” land­fill in north­ern Broward descend­ed on Coun­ty Hall Tues­day, wor­ried about plans to close a trash-burn­ing incin­er­a­tor in the region.

Hun­dreds piled into Coun­ty Com­mis­sion cham­bers, some hav­ing arrived on a bus from the Wyn­moor Vil­lage senior con­do coum­mu­ni­ty in Coconut Creek. City offi­cials and res­i­dents there fear the dis­placed trash could end up heaped upon the land­fill, offi­cial­ly named Monarch Hill but long dubbed Mount Trash­more by locals.

Waste Man­age­men­t’s Whee­labra­tor Tech­nolo­gies Inc. wants Broward Coun­ty Com­mis­sion approval to stop using the north­ern trash-to-ener­gy plant. Under the pro­pos­al, the garbage would rum­ble south in trucks through the heart of the coun­ty to an incin­er­a­tor on U.S. 441, north of Grif­fin Road.

As the coun­ty has seen in recent years, garbage is heav­i­ly con­tro­ver­sial here. Over the past two years, Waste Management/Wheelabrator’s 20-year monop­oly dis­pos­ing of Broward res­i­dents’ trash was bro­ken up, set­ting off a com­pet­i­tive garbage war.

When the dust set­tled, Whee­labra­tor had lost thou­sands of cus­tomers, busi­ness­man-cow­boy Ron Berg­eron’s new com­pa­ny, Sun Berg­eron, had gained thou­sands of cus­tomers, and garbage rates dropped for res­i­dents across the county.

Now, Whee­labra­tor does­n’t have enough trash to jus­ti­fy keep­ing two incin­er­a­tors open, vice pres­i­dent of oper­a­tions Bill Roberts said.

Broward com­mis­sion­ers will take up the issue on Jan. 13. They opt­ed to post­pone a vote so the new coun­ty com­mis­sion­er in North Broward’s Dis­trict 2, attor­ney Mark Bogen, can be sworn in and seat­ed. He won elec­tion on Dec. 4.

Roberts said the deal at hand would­n’t supercede Waste Man­age­men­t’s agree­ment with Coconut Creek about land­fill operations.

The con­tract change is nec­es­sary for anoth­er rea­son: Whee­labra­tor Tech­nolo­gies Inc. is being sold by par­ent com­pa­ny Waste Man­age­ment to an affil­i­ate of Ener­gy Cap­i­tal Part­ners for $1.94 bil­lion, accord­ing to a July 29 announce­ment. Part of that trans­ac­tion involves Waste Man­age­ment retain­ing the north incin­er­a­tor. Whee­labra­tor and its new par­ent com­pa­ny would own only the south incinerator.

The con­cep­tu­al con­tract up for Coun­ty Com­mis­sion approval would allow Waste Man­age­ment to use the north incin­er­a­tor as a trash trans­fer sta­tion, for garbage that would be hauled to the south incinerator.

The busi­ness sale is sched­uled to close in mid-Decem­ber. The coun­ty’s vote isn’t crit­i­cal for the deal, though, Roberts said.

“The deal is going to go through,” he said.

The item is rais­ing a stink — with a lot of infor­ma­tion and mis­in­for­ma­tion in circulation.

A line in the ten­ta­tive con­tract says if the coun­ty needs to get rid of addi­tion­al trash, up to 575,000 tons could be sent to “alter­na­tive dis­pos­al facil­i­ties.” For­mer Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er Ilene Lieber­man, a lob­by­ist for Sun Berg­eron, said that line con­cerns her and her team needs time to ana­lyze it. Sun Berg­eron senior vice pres­i­dent Phil Medico said he also fears the con­tract could give Whee­labra­tor an unfair advantage.

Waste Man­age­ment spokes­woman Dawn McCormick said the land­fill isn’t the only alter­na­tive facil­i­ty for trash; the pro­pos­al adds Okee­chobee Land­fill out­side of South Flori­da, as well, she said.

She also said that under “cur­rent mar­ket con­di­tions,” the trash vol­ume at Monarch Hill is “not antic­i­pat­ed to change.”

But Coconut Creek Com­mis­sion­er Lou Sar­bone said he thinks oth­er­wise, based on “the his­to­ry” at the land­fill, between Waste Man­age­ment and his city.