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During the 1970s, Florida Governor Ruben Askew determined that Florida should reduce its reliance on coal and other non-renewable sources. Coupled with an interest in alternative energy sources after the energy crisis in the mid-70s, this determination led to a push for Florida counties to develop multi-faceted recycling programs. One facet of this program in Miami-Dade County was the construction of the Miami-Dade Resources Recovery Facility. Several Florida counties also built waste-to-energy plants and today, Florida has the largest number of waste-to-energy facilities in the nation.
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In Miami-Dade County, the landfill at NW 58th Street was reaching capacity in the late 1970s. As a result, County representatives contracted Parsons & Whittemore of New York to build and operate a waste-to-energy plant on a site adjacent to the existing landfill. The capacity of the plant's garbage and trash processing units was 936,000 tons of municipal solid waste per year. In a process similar to that of a paper mill, water was added to the MSW as it entered a hydropulper. Thereafter, the MSW was pressed and the process yielded a 50 percent moisture refuse derived fuel (RDF).
Montenay Power Corp. became the operator of the Miami-Dade Resources Recovery Facility in 1985. By 1991, Montenay completed a capital improvement retrofit project that transformed the process from wet to dry. Included in the cost of $73 million, Montenay installed a state-of-the art garbage processing system, enclosed buildings, replaced the existing boilers and upgraded the trash processing lines in the facility's trash processing plant.
A second major project occurred from 1995 - 2000 in which the facility underwent a $136 million expansion and improvement project. A $64 million air quality control system (AQCS) was installed in order to exceed the revised Federal Clean Air Standards which required the facility to achieve MACT (maximum achievable control technology) compliance by continuously monitoring baghouse inlet temperature, CO, NOx, SO2 and opacity. In conjunction with this installation, the plant put into service twin 250-foot stacks, lime spray scrubbers, and baghouse micro filters. The expansion project also included a trash processing improvement project that increased the processing capacity of the trash lines to 1,500 tons per day. The trash improvement project consisted of the installation of a series of trommels and the upgrade of trash shredders.
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