Melbourne resident James Hines says he opened his Big Boy Toy Storage on Skyway Circle in 1997 to let people store their cars, boats and recreational vehicles out of the elements.
But his business’ neighbor, Brevard County’s construction-and-demolition landfill on Sarno Road, has made Big Boy a mess ever since hurricanes Frances and Jeanne ripped through in 2004, Hines told Melbourne planning advisers last week.
“We’ve seen dust and dirt and trash blowing out of that landfill. It’s just a mess,” he told the Melbourne Planning and Zoning Board. Hines was hoping the city would order the county to close its landfill and spare him the onslaught.
Instead, the board agreed with county solid waste officials’ request to let them increase the height of a 10-acre section in the northeast corner of the 80-acre landfill.
The move, if approved July 23 by the City Council, would add 41 more feet of debris to the existing 40-foot-high section and match the 81-foot allowance for the rest of the 80-acre landfill.
And that would add three or four more years to the life of the Sarno Road landfill, county Solid Waste Director Euripedes Rodriguez said.
That goal would be more time to develop a $66 million new landfill – on former ranchland north of U.S. 192 near the Osceola County line – before having to close and cap the Sarno Road facility, he said.
Without the height increase, Rodriguez said, he’d have to cap the Sarno Road landfill next year and send new construction debris 32 miles north to the Central Disposal Facility on Adamson Road west of Cocoa.
With the height increase, he said, he could get 30 more years out of the Cocoa landfill by not having to send South Brevard debris there. And he could wait until 2024 to close Sarno Road.
Or he could simply find another nearby site, he said.
“We are always looking for new options,” he said.
Meanwhile, Assistant County Attorney Abigail Jorandby assured city planning advisers the county is required by state law to do right by Hines and other landfill neighbors and minimize impacts to them.
Hines said he didn’t doubt they try.
“This is just beyond their ability to control the dust coming into our area,” he said.
City Planning Board member Don Laird, however, said he couldn’t see how the city could refuse the county’s request. “I don’t see an alternative to letting them continue at that landfill till they can get a new one,” he said. “We generate that trash, so we have to do something with it.”
Laird won a 5-0 vote on his motion to approve the county’s request.
Brevard County Commissioner Bryan Lober, of District 2, was on hand to hear the meeting on behalf of Chair Kristine Isnardi, whose District 5 includes the landfill area.
Lober recalled Isnardi speaking out in commission meetings in favor of the height increase. Without it, he said, “our costs would be substantially higher.”
Rodriguez recalled the county spending about $10 million in 1991, including legal fees, to take the U.S. 192 ranch site, about 3,000 acres, from Deseret Ranches of Florida in an eminent-domain lawsuit.
But the county can’t use it yet. It would have to do about $66 million worth of work to turn it into a lined landfill. And the county has been wrangling since 1991 for permits to do that from the state Department of Environmental Protection, the Federal Aviation Administration and, currently, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
So for now, Deseret is leasing back its old property from the county to graze cattle.
