Miami-Dade County
ACM Deployment Briefing

Miami-Dade County faces a structurally irreversible disposal capacity crisis: a permanently closed 1-million-ton-per-year incineration facility, two landfills approaching end of life within four years of each other, rising per-household costs, and a $39 million annual deficit. The proposed replacement is still in regulatory review. Carbotura’s ACM deployment offers an alternative that does not require public capital, does not replicate the technology that failed, and generates a Revenue Stack rather than a cost line. This briefing presents both the intelligence basis for that decision and the two deployment architectures available to Miami-Dade.

Every term in this table is a defined term under Carbotura’s Authoritative Voice framework. Where prior county documents, RFPs, or public records use legacy terminology (“waste,” “disposal,” “tipping fees,” “waste-to-energy”), this briefing uses the correct ACM equivalent. Carbotura may acknowledge what the County currently classifies as waste by stating “material currently managed under legacy disposal procurement” when referencing existing operations.

The county’s current operator landscape is fragmented, emergency-patched, and dependent on private haulers and competitor landfill capacity for overflow management. The proposed WTE replacement is in preliminary permitting — not construction. The existing system has no single operator capable of delivering the integrated capacity, revenue diversification, or regulatory classification advantage that an ACM deployment provides.

Miami-Dade’s current cost structure is a triple squeeze: rising per-ton disposal costs, a $39M structural deficit in the collection fund, and the impending loss of $50M+ in landfill revenues as both facilities close. The county’s financial model has no path to equilibrium under the current architecture. An ACM partnership converts this liability stack into a Revenue Stack.

Miami-Dade’s regulatory environment is currently in a state of active transition — the RRF closure plan is with FDEP, three WTE replacement sites are in preliminary permit review, and PFAS liability is crystallising under new federal designation. This transition window is precisely the right moment for ACM classification to be established: before legacy frameworks solidify around a replacement facility, and before landfill PFAS liability compounds further.

The aggregate undisclosed liability exposure facing Miami-Dade’s solid waste system — PFAS, landfill closure, RRF settlement, deficit carry, and WTE capital — likely exceeds $1.5 billion over the next decade. The ACM deployment under Carbotura’s BOO model transfers the capital risk for replacement infrastructure entirely to Carbotura, converts the feedstock liability into a Revenue Stack, and creates a pathway to Exogenesis-based landfill mining of the existing legacy deposits.

Miami-Dade presents an ACM deployment scenario with four compounding structural advantages: a permanent capacity gap with no confirmed solution, a failed combustion technology paradigm creating community and political openness to alternatives, one of the largest per-capita feedstock streams in the US, and an active Zero Waste planning process that lacks any industrial partner capable of delivering at scale. The ACM deployment timing is not speculative — it is aligned with the county’s own transition window.

The county has no binding long-term disposal infrastructure commitment currently in place. The emergency agreements are temporary. The design contract is not a build contract. Miami-Dade is in a position to execute the Circular Offtake Agreement as its primary infrastructure decision without conflicting with any existing contractual obligation of material consequence.

The current system extracts $547/household/year from residents, generates a structural deficit, and is heading toward a $1B+ capital commitment that the county would bear alone. The ACM system replaces that architecture with a zero-capital, Revenue Stack model where the county’s financial relationship with its feedstock stream shifts from net cost to net revenue within 13 months of first delivery.

Every major risk vector Miami-Dade faces over the next decade — landfill capacity, PFAS liability, WTE capital commitment, community opposition, climate vulnerability — is either eliminated or materially reduced by an ACM deployment. The question is not whether Miami-Dade should transition. The question is whether it does so in front of these risks or after they have compounded. The ACM window is now.

Option A is the most straightforward path from the current feedstock crisis to an operational ACM system. A single 500 TPD module addresses approximately 10% of Miami-Dade’s feedstock stream immediately and creates a scalable platform. It can be operational within the Carbotura BOO construction timeline, requires no intergovernmental rail coordination, and delivers maximum local employment and economic impact.

Option B is the refinery model at regional scale. Manufacturing feedstock from Miami-Dade flows north via rail from existing Transfer Stations to a Central Florida ACM Facility that aggregates supply from multiple counties — exactly as crude from multiple wellheads flows to a central refinery. For Miami-Dade, this architecture is particularly suited to scenarios where in-county land for a full-stack facility is constrained, or where the county wishes to participate in a broader Florida ACM network from the outset.

Miami-Dade’s feedstock stream is large enough to support the full 6,000 TPD envelope — making this one of the few US counties capable of sustaining a maximum-scale ACM deployment. The modular 100 TPD increment design means the county can start at 500 TPD, validate operations, and expand without disruption to existing collection infrastructure. Each increment adds a Revenue Stack without adding capital risk to Miami-Dade.

On every material dimension — capital obligation, emissions profile, revenue generation, PFAS handling, landfill life extension, community acceptance, and regulatory classification — both ACM deployment architectures outperform the current system and the proposed WTE replacement. The choice between Option A and Option B is an operational and siting preference, not a performance preference. Both are unconditionally superior to the baseline.

The collection infrastructure does not change. The workforce does not change. The feedstock volume does not change. What changes is where the feedstock goes, what it becomes, and who gets paid — transitioning Miami-Dade from a net cost operator to a feedstock supplier in a manufacturing system that generates revenue from materials that currently go to landfill.

The ACM financial model replaces Miami-Dade’s ~$1B capital commitment and structural deficit with a zero-capital, revenue-generating partnership. At 500 TPD Phase 1, the Revenue Stack is already material. At 2,000 TPD Phase 3, it approaches $1B annually. The county’s per-household cost stabilises or declines as Circular Royalty™ revenue supplements the collection fund. Over 30 years, the cumulative Circular Royalty™ return to Miami-Dade represents one of the most transformative financial outcomes available to any county in the US.

Miami-Dade will be the first US county of this scale to receive a Circular Royalty™ — a contractual payment derived from the manufactured value of its own feedstock stream. Over 30 years at 2,000 TPD, the cumulative Circular Royalty™ return becomes one of the most significant municipal revenue streams ever generated from a materials infrastructure partnership in Florida’s history.

Miami-Dade is currently at Stage 1. The path from this briefing to first Circular Royalty™ payment is seven stages, all of which Carbotura navigates as the BOO operator. The county’s active investment is time and decision-making authority. Carbotura’s investment is capital. The 30-year engagement produces a cumulative value transfer to Miami-Dade that no combustion facility or landfill expansion can approach.

Miami-Dade residents currently pay $547 per household per year for a system that is structurally in deficit, losing its primary disposal infrastructure, and heading toward either a multi-year fee increase cycle or a $1B public capital commitment. The ACM partnership is designed to hold or reduce per-household costs while generating Circular Royalty™ revenue that the county can deploy for resident benefit. The cost comparison is not close.

Miami-Dade is simultaneously facing a PFAS drinking water emergency (PFOS at 4.7x EPA limit), groundwater contamination risk from landfills adjacent to sensitive aquifer zones, and a proposal to replace one combustion facility with another. The ACM deployment addresses all three vectors: PFAS destruction by design, landfill leachate reduction through feedstock diversion and Exogenesis, and combustion elimination. The environmental case for ACM deployment in Miami-Dade is among the strongest of any jurisdiction Carbotura has assessed.

The ACM deployment at 500 TPD Phase 1 creates more direct employment than the Covanta RRF had at closure — in higher-skilled, more durable manufacturing roles. At 2,000 TPD, total employment impact approaches 2,000 jobs in a county with documented economic equity challenges. The annual economic footprint of $32M+ per 400 TPD module compounds over 30 years into one of the most significant industrial economic contributions in South Florida’s recent history.

The most important action Miami-Dade County officials can take today is to request a Stage 2 technical briefing before the Zero Waste Master Plan is finalised and before a WTE construction contract is executed. Both of those events lock the county’s infrastructure trajectory for a generation. The ACM window is open now. It does not stay open indefinitely.