Reader Profile: Michael Fernandez

From hurricanes to pandemics, in his position as director of the Miami-Dade County Department of Solid Waste Management in Florida, Mike Fernandez has learned that factors affecting solid waste collection are unpredictable, although one budgets for anticipated trends. “You’ve got to make adjustments,” he points out. Fernandez manages the county’s $500 million integrated solid waste operations for more than 350,000 households within 320 square miles as well as three active landfills—Class I, III, and ash monofil—and long-term care of two inactive landfills, three transfer stations and satellite transferring operations. He oversees household hazardous waste centers, 13 neighborhood trash and recycling centers and a Waste-to-Energy RDF facility that is capable of processing 1.2 million tons of renewable energy. That power is exported to the grid, with a large portion sold to the city of Homestead. Other supportive functions include solid waste code enforcement and environmental and engineering technical services. The system manages more than 1.8 million tons at its landfills. Solid waste operations also are responsible for disaster debris collection and disposal for Miami-Dade County. Solid waste is collected twice weekly on 150 routes. Bi-weekly single-stream recycling is outsourced to two companies; Miami-Dade recycles 60,000 tons yearly. One hundred trucks make daily scheduled pick-ups of bulky waste. The solid waste operation also has a paint recycling effort. An additional responsibility: mosquito control through larvicide applications.  

What He Does Day to Day 

Fernandez spends time meeting and speaking with subordinates and with the public. “Our operations have 1,100 employees,” he says. “There are a lot of components. I'm a firm believer in good communication. If you're not communicating, things can go wrong very quickly, especially with such a large organization.” Fernandez also is the director of SWANA's Collection and Transfer Technical Board whose members grapple with the budgetary impacts of COVID as residential pickups increased. "You budget based on trends and no one saw this pandemic coming," he notes. 

What Led Him Into This Line of Work

Fernandez initially wanted to be a firefighter and did some ride time with firefighters and EMTs while in high school. “Once I had to deal with body fluids and blood, I decided maybe this wasn't for me,” he says. “I got a call one day from a temp agency and they asked me if I wanted to work at a garbage company. I didn’t want to work at a garbage company, but they encouraged me to try it out.” He started working at the former Browning-Ferris Industries and found he enjoyed it. “The people were hardworking people doing cool stuff with the equipment,” he says. He became a supervisor at age 21 and got his CDL license to drive trucks. Fernandez went on to work for the city of Hallandale Beach, FL, as a solid waste superintendent before joining Miami-Dade County’s solid waste operations. Fernandez earned a bachelor's degree in Business Administration from Florida International University. He received certification in landfill design and construction from the University of Florida and certification in Manager of Integrated Solid Waste Systems from SWANA.  

What He Likes Best About His Work

“I love the solid waste industry,” says Fernandez. “I love providing a service to our customers and the understanding of how that service works. It’s not just the garbage on the curb. I like the logistics behind it, the financials that make it happen. The people in this industry are great—the hardest-working group of people you can know.”   

His Greatest Challenge 

Fernandez is working to mitigate the challenges associated with taking Miami-Dade County’s solid waste collection efforts to the next level. “Working in a government, things take time,” he points out. “There are a lot of processes you have to follow. You have to have patience and concentration so you don't lose track of what you're doing. That's how projects fall apart. The greatest challenge right now is the infrastructure, the future of the city and its next chapter with new technology, new facilities, new equipment. Our infrastructure is old. We have to have an aggressive capital plan to do something with it. I can’t do it by myself. I have a team to help me do it and has the same vision as I do.”