Two years after Miami-Dade County’s waste-to-energy plant burnt to a crisp, there may be new safeguards in place to protect residents from another such blaze.
The bill, effective July 1, would apply the restriction to sites a half-mile (2,640 feet) from any residential property, school or commercial property.
Hialeah Gardens Republican Sen. Bryan Ávila, the measure’s sponsor, said the proposed change wouldn’t apply to existing facilities. He’s also looking at amending the bill to allow more allowances near commercial properties.
Florida has 10 waste-to-energy facilities statewide, according to the Florida Waste-to-Energy Coalition whose Executive Director, Joe Kilsheimer, spoke against SB 1008 on Monday.
Kilsheimer argued that waste-to-energy, when compared to landfilling and older trash incineration methods, is far and away the superior method for disposing of trash. He said waste-to-energy facilities annually prevent landfilling 5 million tons of municipal solid waste that would otherwise produce methane emissions, create toxic runoff, take up huge areas of land and require post-closure remediation that can last up to a century.
It also recovers and recycles more than 200,000 tons of metal yearly, enough to build 140 cars, he said, adding that in other areas in the state and across the country — from Lake County and Fort Lauderdale to the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center outside the Twins’ ballpark in Minneapolis — waste-to-energy facilities are situated far closer to cities than Ávila’s bill would allow.
“In fact, in major countries around the world, waste-to-energy facilities are often sited in the middle of major cities, literally next to school and home,” he said. “Because waste-to-energy is a proven, safe and reliable technology.”
Residents of Doral, where the Miami-Dade plant burned for nearly three weeks in early 2023, have a different perspective, and they’ve foughtplans to construct a replacement within the city’s bounds. So have those who live in the Broward County city of Miramar, where a nearby site has been floated as an alternative place to build the plant.
Firefighters respond to a February 2023 blaze at a waste-to-energy plant in Doral. Image via Miami-Dade County Fire Rescue.
Facing that opposition already, Miami-Dade is also against SB 1008 in its present form. Executive Assistant County Attorney Jess McCarty told the committee the bill’s restriction on projects near commercial areas is a non-starter.
“The way the bill reads currently, all five sites currently under consideration for a new facility in Miami-Dade would be ineligible under the bill,” he said.
Ávila said that concern was already on his radar and would likely be addressed soon through an amendment. Other changes may include language specifying from what part of the facility the half-mile distance would be measured. Ávila said the incinerator stack or cooling tower could be the “central point from which we have that distance.”
But a change is needed, he said. A representative from the environmentally focused Sierra Club agreed and signaled support for SB 1008.
Ávila briefly detailed what Doral residents experienced after the facility caught fire. Flames erupted outside of the building numerous times. Ash filled the sky, covering cars and homes. Many residents couldn’t go outside for any extended length of time because of the contaminated air.
The incident caught the attention of President Donald Trump’s second son, Eric Trump, who has opposed rebuilding the plant in Doral, where his father owns a golf resort.
Ávila acknowledged the half-mile restriction may make it difficult for some local governments. Lake Mary Republican Sen. Jason Brodeur said that the commercial restriction, which encompasses agricultural operations, would make it all but impossible in some areas of the state.
“But I think having some sort of buffer there,” Ávila said, “is something that’s imperative. I don’t live within a half-mile of one of these facilities, but I know a lot of residents that do, and they tend to be not very well off, and they tend to not have many options as it relates to housing.
“So, my heart is really with those residents and trying to make sure that moving forward for any new facility that we have some protections for those residents and that local governments are not allowing for a massive development around these sites where there should be at least a little bit of space.”
SB 1008 will next go to the Senate Community Affairs Committee, after which it has one more stop before reaching a floor vote. Its House twin (HB 1609) by Republican Reps. David Borrero of Sweetwater and Meg Weinberger of Palm Beach Gardens awaits a hearing before the first of three committees to which it was referred this month.
The bill was inspired by the violence at a Donald Trump rally in Pennsylvania.
Those looking to harm Presidents, Governors and other heads of state may pay the ultimate price in Florida — even if they don’t succeed in killing their target.
Sen. Blaise Ingoglia’s measure (SB 776) which cleared the Criminal Justice Committee, contemplates adding to Florida law that the death sentence can be issued when a “capital felony was committed against the head of a state, including, but not limited to, the President or the Vice President of the United States or the Governor of this or another state, or in an attempt to commit such crime a capital felony was committed against another individual.”
Ingoglia noted that “the death penalty is reserved for those convicted of heinous crimes” and that his helps to facilitate that by adding aggravating factors of an assassination of a head of state or the killing of another person in attempting to do so. He described the attempted assassination of Donald Trump and the concomitant killing of Corey Comperatore as heinous and worthy of extraordinary sanction in law.
One citizen opposed the bill.
Grace Hannah of Floridians Opposed to the Death Penalty said the bill would fall under federal jurisdiction and that an incident like that contemplated by the bill is “extremely rare.”
Education Secretary Linda McMahon says she and her boss in the White House are both “strong proponents” of school choice, but the federal government’s role in expanding it will be limited under President Donald Trump.
“It’s a continuing process” that must be pursued at the state level, not mandated by Washington, she said.
“The rub is that teacher unions say it’s going to bankrupt the public schools (and serve only students with no other options). I think we’re clearly proving that is not the case.”
McMahon’s comments came Tuesday afternoon during a roundtable discussion on education at the Kendall campus of True North Classical Academy, a charter network operating in Miami-Dade’s unincorporated Kendall neighborhood. It was one of multiple school visits she had planned in the county that day.
Other roundtable participants included, among others, Interim Florida International University President and immediate past Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez, Miami Dade College President Madeline Pumariega, Miami-Dade School Board member Monical Colucci, former state Rep. Michael Bileca, charter school magnate Fernando Zuleta, and former Collier County School Board member Erika Donalds, a pro-charter education activist whose husband, U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, is the presumptive GOP front-runner in the 2026 Governor’s race.
Zuleta, the founder and President of for-profit charter school management company Academica, said that while Florida has been a leader on school choice, many places in the U.S. remain “choice deserts.”
He urged McMahon to look into the matter. McMahon nodded while he spoke, but made no commitment to do so.
While the U.S. Department of Education’s (USDOE) role in implementing school choice policies will be limited, Donalds hinted that the agency isn’t taking a passive stance on the matter. She said people should “be on the lookout” in the coming days for federal guidance on further empowering parents.
McMahon, a 76-year-old former professional wrestling promoter, past Administrator of the Small Business Administration and ex-member of the Connecticut State Board of Education, reiterated that she has a “mandate” from Trump to abolish the USDOE. Last week, the Department announced it was cutting its staff from some 4,100 employees to 2,200.
That was a “first step” toward fulfilling the President’s wishes of shutting down the agency, she said. She referred to the layoffs as “trimming.”
McMahon said she’s tasking the remaining staff at USDOE staff with assembling a set of guiding principles from which state and local governments can take cues.
“We really want to leave best practice in place to provide states with the right tools,” she said, adding that if she is indeed America’s last Education Secretary, “I will have been successful at my job.”
The proposals would stipulate long-term anchoring permits issued by FWC.
Owners of boats adrift in Florida waters will have to be more careful about keeping their vessels moored if a bill moving through the Senate floor gets approved.
The Senate Appropriations Committee on Agriculture, Environment and General Governmentgave preliminary approval to legislation (SB 164) that calls for increasing regulations on vessels. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Anna Maria Rodriguez, a Doral Republican, would require new registrations for long-term anchoring of vessels through the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC).
The bill proposes “requiring the commission to issue, at no cost, a permit for the long-term anchoring of a vessel which includes specified information; requiring the commission to use an electronic application and permitting system; requiring that a vessel subject to a specified number of violations within a 24-month period which result in certain dispositions be declared a public nuisance, etc.”
The bill has one more stop before the Senate Fiscal Policy Committee. There is also a companion bill (HB 1149) moving through the House. Rep. Fabian Basabe, a Miami Beach Republican, is sponsoring that measure, which still needs to navigate its first stop, the House Natural Resources and Disasters Subcommittee.
Derelict vessels have long been the bane of many local waterways. Along the Intracoastal Waterway or any one of hundreds of tributaries that run through the state, errant boats can go adrift and be found aground.
Some municipalities have already taken matters into their own hands. Indian River County, for instance, has a derelict vessel removal program that partners with the FWC to get those boats out of the way and allows residents to report such disabled watercraft.
And municipalities within that county have gotten increasingly aggressive about removing derelict boats, in cities such as Vero Beach and Indian River Shores.
The Senate measure also intends that those boat owners whose vessels go adrift during storms or natural disasters round up those vessels afterward. The FWC issued multiple advisories about derelict vessels in the Fall of 2024 due to hurricanes.