County Commission on 2025-01-28 (PART 02) - Jan 31, 2025

meeting

Broward County Commission 4h 57m 3 speakers 8 agenda items transcribed 6 days ago official recording ↗

▲ 0

Transcript

jump: agenda · speakers · find in transcript

Transcript

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What is the purpose of the opening procedural remarks and agenda?

Beam Furr 8:07

If everybody would uh grab a seat, we're gonna get started in just a minute. Oh you read that.

Steve Geller 8:26

Mm-hmm.

Beam Furr 8:28

Kevin, you look for me.

Steve Geller 9:18

How did

Beam Furr 9:18

you get involved in that?

Steve Geller 9:20

Steve Geller 10:12

Yeah, it's that. Yeah.

Beam Furr 10:22

Unfortunately. Oh, we got it, but His drew back? Okay, one, two, three, four, five, six. Where'd Lamar go? Yeah, you leave it. I don't know Um I think you're us leaving that part right now because

Steve Geller 11:17

Yeah, I can look for that. I saw that we got in here.

Beam Furr 11:58

Okay. Okay, we're gonna Call this meeting back to order. If everybody please have a seat.

Beam Furr 12:13

Drew, you ready?

Beam Furr 12:21

Where's uh McKinsey? Okay. Good afternoon everybody. Welcome to Broward County. Commission? For today. Um today We are going to revisit the land use application from waste management to return twenty-four acres back to its original category of industrial before it was designed as a power plant at the request of the county. We're also considering allowing for an increase in the height of a of the landfill. Why it's important for the public to know why we are considering this. Waste management is telling us that this is necessary because there are only about six years of capacity at its current height and available land. The primary criteria we use to consider the granting of land use requests is compatibility.

Beam Furr 13:24

Currently, it is literally surrounded on all sides by the same designation, industrial, and our staff has determined the land use is considered. consistent with the surrounding uh properties. But in this case, the use is also significant because we have deleg delegated part part of our responsibility, our stri our statutory responsibility to waste management and in turn to this site. Our statutory responsibility requires us as a county to quote ensure the availability of solid waste facilities with sufficient capacity to process and dispose of present and future volumes of waste. That means all the waste generated by all two million of us and all our visitors, currently approximately ten billion pounds a year, we have that responsibility.

Beam Furr 14:19

not only for our immediate needs but for the foreseeable future and also for unforeseen catastrophic events like hurricanes. Uh waste management at the last meeting informed us that this landfill in its present state, like I said, uh has about a six year lifespan, and it currently cannot guarantee cannot guarantee that it can be used in an emergency situation because of its lim because of those limitations. Let that sink in for a minute. I want us to be fully prepared when hurricane season comes. I don't want some headline saying we fiddled around and uh it should we should have acted. Because we're out of time, we cannot delay any further and decisions have to be made. Hard ones. Decisions that only we can make.

Beam Furr 15:10

And it this is our responsibility. And when you think about permitting and preparation, those things take a lot of time. We're in the middle of permitting now and it's taken forever. It was about ten years ago I was new to the county commission, as was Commissioner Bogan, when waste management requested to close the North Waste Energy Plant, the plant on which this land we are considering is located. I was new to the county commission at the time, but I wasn't new to the issue. I'd been on the resource recovery board for many, many years as a Hollywood City Commissioner, and I knew the importance of that facility. and the overall system. And back then I pleaded. Від моло комісір to deny that request.

Beam Furr 16:00

I spoke of how important it was to the county. I suggested we take it by imminent domain. I said whatever we could. To keep that billion dollar a asset from being dismantled. Do it. I lost that vote eight to one. And ever since our landfill rates have doubled. Our recycling rates have been cut in half, and we have spent the last ten years trying to put a solid waste system back together again. And I can tell you as your representative on this issue for the last ten years, it has been a long slog to sla to say the least. So the land that is up for discussion today is the land where the power plant was sited.