Miami-Dade County wants more than $750 million from the company it says let a waste-to-energy plant burn down.

The county filed the lawsuit Monday, Sept. 28, against Reworld Dade LLC and parent company Reworld Holding Corp., formerly known as Covanta. The suit alleges Reworld ignored repeated fire-safety warnings at the county's Resource Recovery Facility in Doral before a February 2023 fire destroyed the plant, according to the county's announcement.

The fallout reaches Key Biscayne. The 160-acre facility processed about 1 million tons of municipal solid waste a year and generated up to 77 megawatts of electricity for the county, Florida Power & Light and several municipalities. Its loss has forced the county to ship trash by rail to landfills as far away as Okeechobee. Miami-Dade estimates it spends $65 million a year on trash transportation alone, a cost borne by every county resident through solid-waste fees. Reworld received about $60 million a year to operate and maintain the plant.

County seeks jury trial on nine claims, including fraud

The lawsuit includes nine claims: breach of contract, breach of guarantee, gross negligence, violations of the county's False Claims Ordinance and fraud in the inducement, among others. The suit contends Reworld concealed the extent of safety problems while obtaining a new operating agreement in October 2022 and seeking payment for its services.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said in the county's announcement that the fire's destruction of the facility has had enormous consequences for the county and that the lawsuit aims to recover damages and protect taxpayers.

The county has requested a jury trial. The allegations have not been proven in court.

Complaint cites years of ignored fire-safety warnings

The 67-page complaint lays out a timeline of alleged neglect. Between October 2019 and September 2022, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue issued six notices of violation for fire-code problems at the facility. The county's bond engineer and other inspectors also raised concerns, the complaint states.

According to Florida Politics, which reported details from the complaint, Reworld employees allegedly closed valves supplying sprinklers around the conveyor where the fire started. No repair work required the water to be shut off. One affected system remained closed for about a year, the complaint alleges.

Five weeks before the fire, an inspection for the facility's property insurers warned that impaired protection systems in areas with combustible material could allow a fire to spread rapidly, according to the complaint.

On Sunday, Feb. 12, 2023, a conveyor stopped at about 1:33 p.m., but its motion alarm did not sound, the complaint states. Flames appeared around 2:10 p.m. Neither the overhead nor lower sprinkler system activated. A 911 call was not placed until about 2:16 p.m.

The fire burned for 18 days.

At the time of the blaze, at least five fire-protection systems in the garbage-processing area carried red tags indicating they could not reliably suppress a fire, the suit says.

Reworld has blamed county for aging plant

No response from Reworld to the Sept. 28 lawsuit has been published. In a November 2025 letter reported by Florida Politics, Reworld blamed Miami-Dade for failing to fund needed upgrades at the aging, county-owned plant. The company argued the county knew the decades-old facility needed major capital improvements, failed to insure it fully and chose against repairing it after the fire.

No replacement plant as landfill space dwindles

The county still has no replacement plan. A July 2026 memo estimated a new plant would cost $3.16 billion, more than $1 billion above the prior estimate, the Miami Herald reported. Talks with a development consortium of Florida Power & Light and FCC Environmental Services had broken down.

At a July 30 press conference, Levine Cava called the rising cost "a big hurdle" and said, "At this moment, we don't have a path forward."

Meanwhile, Miami-Dade generates about 5 million tons of garbage a year, and remaining landfill space is expected to run out within five years, according to WLRN. Two weeks before the lawsuit was filed, county commissioners set new rules requiring the city of Doral to negotiate a host fee within three months, or the county would again consider sites there for a new incinerator, Miami Today reported.

No trial date or hearing schedule has been set.