Miami-Dade County on Monday sued for more than $750 million damages stemming from the February 2023 fire that destroyed the county’s Resource Recovery Facility in Doral, for which the county has yet to find a replacement site or plant at a cost estimated to exceed $3 billion. The lawsuit against R eworld Dade LLC and its parent Reworld Holding Corp. alleges Reworld, which got about $60 million a year to operate and maintain the incinerator plant, failed to address known fire safety deficiencies despite years of documented warnings. The suit says the company failed to properly maintain critical fire-protection systems and shut-off control valves or water pumps serving multiple sprinkler systems, allowing a small fire to spread and ultimately destroy much of the plant. The four-decade-old, 160-acre plant was one of the largest waste-to-energy plants in the nation. It processed nearly 3,000 tons of waste daily, generating up to 77 megawatts of electric power. Since the fire, the county has tried but failed to settle on a site for a new plant. Despite opposition from the city and its neighbors, Doral sites were put back in consideration for a new incinerator because negotiations hadn’t begun three years after commissioners agreed to exclude Doral in picking a site if the city negotiated a fee. Doral had been required to cut a deal after the county had picked a new waste site elsewhere, so two weeks ago commissioners set new rules for Doral to either negotiate a figure and pay it in three months or the county will again consider unspecified sites there. At the old burned-out plant, the county said in a statement as it filed suit, between October 2019 and September 2022 Miami-Dade Fire Rescue issued six notices of violation for fire code violations. The complaint also alleges that Reworld received repeated warnings from the county’s bond engineer and other inspectors. At the time of the fire, at least five fire-protection systems in the garbage processing area were impaired and could not be relied upon to suppress a fire, a county statement said. “The destruction of this facility has had enormous consequences for Miami-Dade…. We are taking this action to recover the damages our county has suffered and protect our taxpayers,” county Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said in a written statement. The county has requested a jury trial. The plant had processed nearly half of Miami-Dade’s municipal solid waste and generated electricity for the county, Florida Power Light and several municipalities. Its destruction forced the county to find alternative ways to dispose of that waste at significant additional expense, the county’s statement said. The county is burying some garbage in its own landfills and sending other waste out of the county by train to be buried further north in Florida. The fee that the county seeks from Doral, according to 2023 legislation, is aimed at partially defraying county costs and funding relocation of the old waste-to-energy incinerator. “Right now, the City of Doral should come to the county and start negotiating that fee,” Commissioner Raquel Regalado said in a hearing as the county was setting the current year’s budget. A July report by Mayor Levine Cava estimated the cost of a new plant to process the county’s garbage had risen to $3.158 billion. At the time, a consortium of two firms that was proposing to build and operate the plant hadn’t unveiled a completed proposal or a financial model, and the mayor reported that talks with the county had broken down. The mayor’s July report said the commission would have to decide where to put the plant and how to pay for it. That has not yet happened. The post Miami-Dade sues for $750 million damages in incinerator blaze appeared first on Miami Today. ...read more read less