Landfill Audit Report a Summary. By Geniusofdespair

ABSTRACT — FINAL AUDIT REPORT BY THE INSPECTOR GENERAL  IG10-53

This audit focused on County Landfill Grants awarded to the three subject cities to close landfills located within their geographical area. The framework for the Landfill Grants was established in 2004 by the Miami-Dade County Board of County Commissioners (BCC) in its adoption of Resolution R-244-04 and in its acceptance of an accompanying report. Grant funding was derived from a $75 million bond issuance in 2005.

Our report has 7 findings and 11 recommendations. Our findings include comments on PWWM operating practices and its administration of the Grants pursuant to adopted BCC resolutions, grant agreements, and PWWM procedures. Our report chronicles how PWWM, the County’s bond engineers, and the grant recipients (the cities of North Miami, Miami, and Homestead) administered the expenditure of grant monies through June 30, 2011.

The main finding of the OIG involves the lack of records maintained by two of the Grantees. The City of North Miami (Munisport) and the City of Homestead have not maintained grant-required books, records, and documents of grant fund expenditures. The required records would document that the ultimate recipient of grant funds, i.e., the entity or individual actually performing the work, used the grant funds to perform the work authorized by the grant agreement.

Another issue for the OIG is that the grant term requiring the inclusion of affidavits and releases of liens related to payments made under previous draw requests was not being followed on the Munisport Landfill closure project. In comparison, draw requests submitted on the Homestead Landfill closure project included the required affidavits and releases.



Again relating to the Munisport Landfill closure project, the OIG is uneasy with the project’s coupling with the site’s commercial development plans. We note that this project has not been worked since 20081 because of issues with the site’s developer, Biscayne Landing, LLC. The landfill closure was tied to the landfill’s development and when that development stopped, so did work on the landfill closure. There is no deadline in the grant agreement by which the landfill’s closure must be completed and, although it has the ability to do so with available grant funds, the City of North Miami has not proceeded on its own to complete the project. The OIG also observes that the Virginia Key Landfill closure project is at a standstill. Our concern here involves the fact that approximately $28 million has been sitting idle in a restricted pooled cash account since 2005—bearing minimal interest—while the County continues to pay the debt service on bond proceeds that are not being used. It is the OIG’s observation that the allocation of millions of dollars to languishing projects, such as the Virginia Key Landfill and the Munisport Landfill closure projects, is costly and ineffective.

Regarding the Homestead grant, there remains approximately $2,500 in the Homestead escrow account, notwithstanding that the project has been complete since June 2009 and final payment made in November 2009. PWWM has not made an effort to reclaim these funds from the escrow account and return them to the County.

Lastly, we note that PWWM paid $90,483 in bond engineer fees related to work at the landfill closure projects using bond proceeds instead of its operating funds. Such fees are not an authorized expenditure of bond proceeds. PWWM also paid for independent engineer services at the Munisport Landfill closure project without obtaining supporting documentation, such as monthly status reports or activity reports; meeting summaries; reports of site visits; site photos; etc., to substantiate the services provided.