Coal ash is dropped from a truck, as some of the waste material from power plants gets used in the reclamation of coal mines in Western Maryland.
Coal ash is dropped from a truck, as some of the waste material from power plants gets used in the reclamation of coal mines in Western Maryland. (Doug Kapustin, 2009)

Osceola County leaders have always had a knack for stepping into messes. Now they've jumped with both feet into a huge pile of coal ash.

About 100 tons of it has been delivered from a dump in Puerto Rico to an Osceola County landfill, and a lot more could be on the way. Citizens are upset, environmentalists are troubled and U.S. Rep. Darren Soto has called for the deal to be scrapped.


County commissioners are also upset, troubled and calling for the deal to be scrapped. That might seem odd considering they negotiated and approved the deal.

In Osceola County, it's just another testament to the old adage, "Those who forget history are doomed to look like Wile E. Coyote."

The cartoon critter spent his career trying to catch the Roadrunner. He often used dynamite, which would inevitably blow up in his face.

Commissioners' faces haven't literally been covered in Caribbean soot this week, but the commission has appeared cartoonish trying to explain this self-inflicted fiasco.

The deal allows JED Landfill to import 65,000 to 325,000 tons of coal ash, though it may be more. The ash is a byproduct of coal-fired power plants.

Puerto Rico has banned it from island landfills, which are not designed to keep the boron, arsenic, uranium, selenium and other poisons from seeping into ground water.

The JED Landfill east of St. Cloud apparently meets safety standards, but it's understandable that citizens would be concerned.

You'd think commissioners would have gotten ahead of the story. They would have explained to all concerned that the landfill was already storing coal ash.

They would have tried to convince skeptics that getting a $2-per-ton cut was a dandy deal for the county.

They would have tried to assure everyone there was no chance they'd ever be sipping boron.

County residents might not have believed the commission, but at least they wouldn't have felt hoodwinked by the lack of transparency.

So what did commissioners do?

They tacked the contract amendment onto their April 1 meeting agenda at the last minute. There were no public hearings. Nobody got to ask, "Why do we want this nasty stuff anywhere near?"

Commissioners didn't discuss the deal before voting. They simply put it on the consent agenda and approved it with 34 other unrelated items.


But word seeped out and the selenium hit the fan. Commissioners retrenched and said they needed to give the deal a second look.

Then they voted to get out of it altogether. There's only one problem.

Under the contract, Waste Connections gets to decide whether to cancel the deal. All Osceola County can do is submit a request.

Commission Chairwoman Cheryl Grieb sent the letter last Wednesday. Waste Connections hasn't indicated what it will do, but commissioners don't have much leverage.

Maybe they can offer Waste Connections executives free tickets to the National Finals Rodeo.

Osceola County went after that event with guns blazing in 2015. Commissioners initially approved a deal that would have committed more than $100 million in public money to build a 24,000-seat rodeo arena and subsidize construction of a private resort.

The deal was approved at a rare Sunday morning meeting that lasted all of 25 minutes.

That grand plan eventually fell through, not unlike the World Expo Center. That was a convention center so big that it could have been seen from the moon.

The proposal dawned in the late 1990s and commissioners spent years chasing a pipe dream. Among their other pursuits was Vedaland, an $800 million Transcendental Meditation theme park championed by magician Doug Henning in the early 1990s.

It would have featured a building levitating over a pond. Alas, the whole project never got off the ground.

These starry-eyed forays wasted more time than taxpayer money, but they've forged an image of a county that can be taken for a ride.

At least the current one can't go past Dec. 31. That's when Waste Connections has to stop importing the Puerto Rican coal ash.

But in another twist, it seems there's no limit on imports. The Osceola News-Gazette reported the contract doesn't cap how many tons can be dumped.

Before the New Year arrives, Osceola County just might lay claim to the coal ash pile that can be seen from the moon.

That's what happens when you spend five minutes vetting a deal.

As dump trucks rumble toward St. Cloud, the first thing we hope is that commissioners are right — the double-lined JED Landfill can safely handle the coal ash.

Our second hope is that Osceola County commissioners will finally learn from their mistakes. This Wile E. Coyote face has become an all-too-familiar look.

Editorials are the opinion of the Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board and are written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Mike Lafferty, Jay Reddick, David Whitley, Shannon Green and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson.