Miami-Dade mayor abandons incinerator plan attacked by Trump’s son

Two months after her plan to build a new garbage incinerator came under attack by President Donald Trump’s son, Miami-Dade’s mayor is dropping her longtime fight for a new trash-burning facility and instead wants the county to explore building a new landfill somewhere else in Florida.

In a weekend memo, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava explained why she says hauling trash out of the county makes more sense than replacing the Doral incinerator that was burning almost half of the garbage collected by county trucks before the facility burned down in early 2023 at its longtime site in Doral.

While a new incinerator would be a workable solution, Levine Cava wrote in her Saturday memo that “the costs of building and maintaining a new facility are extremely high, and any site selected would likely generate legal or other challenges that would significantly extend the project timeline. This decision also comes at a time of mounting pressure on our County’s overall budget.”