OSCEOLA COUNTY, Fla. — Osceola County commissioners approved dumping coal ash from Puerto Rico's coal-fired power plants in April, and since then, truckload after truckload has been making its way to a local landfill.
Troopers with the Florida Highway Patrol were spotted Wednesday morning intercepting trucks just a few miles south of where the trucks are turning into the landfill.
The highway patrol cares because overweight trucks can destroy the roads. Some may also lack the braking power to stop themselves - and all that coal ash - if there's an emergency.
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Twice on Wednesday, troopers caught trucks full of coal ash breaking the law, putting their payload ahead of safety.
According to warnings written during a sting operation, FHP said community complaints about unsafe trucks prompted its presence on the roads around the JED landfill Wednesday morning.
Some of the same people who were picketing last Friday said they're the ones who called.
Up the road in Harmony, what the troopers found was no surprise to some of the protesters.
"Well, we knew it was true before. That's why we turned it in," said resident Joseph Balash.
Balash did not call them himself, but he said he knew the trucks were dangerous.
"They're unsafe on the road,” Balash said. ‘These trucks are coming up the highway and they're doing 70 miles per hour. They're overweight. Their brakes aren't capable of stopping them in time. They're a hazard to the public."
FHP conducted13 unannounced inspections Wednesday outside the JED landfill of coal ash trucks and others.
One coal ash truck was 5,000 pounds over its weight limit. Another was even further over the limit.
An agency spokesperson is still pulling together those details. She said the coal ash was properly secured in those trucks based on what the law requires.
Troopers said most of these coal ash trucks are individually owner operated. The agency generally finds that those trucks are in worse shape than ones in a big fleet.
Records show they're dispatched by a company called Soil Tech out of Tampa.
People in Osceola County are up in arms about the coal ash because of how quickly the decision was made to bring it in from Puerto Rico.
On Tuesday, WFTV uncovered emails between county employees and the landfill showing the timetable was "stepped up considerably" on March 26.
Two days later, an agreement was drawn up and ready to go. The county signed off on the deal four days after that.
Officials said the ash is tested before it leaves Puerto Rico and those tests confirm the levels of the metals are within safety guidelines mandated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection sent an inspector two weeks ago, who reported that the landfill had proper documentation for the coal ash as it arrived for dumping.
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