Covanta Lee County Resource Recovery Facility

The Lee County Solid Waste Resource Recovery Facility is operated by Covanta Lee, Inc. as a public-private partnership with Lee County, Florida. It is located in Fort Myers, Florida and began commercial operation in December 1994 to serve the needs of both Lee and Hendry counties. In 2007, the facility was expanded by 636 tons per day. Today the facility processes 1,836 tons per day of solid waste while generating up to 57.3 megawatts of clean, renewable energy with approximately 50 megawatts sold to Seminole Electric Cooperative thru 2016. Covanta Lee uses reclaimed water from a city-owned waste water treatment plant for all of its process water and it is equipped with both ferrous (steel) and non-ferrous (brass, copper, aluminum) recovery systems to remove metals from the ash residue. As part of the County's award-winning integrated resource recovery system, there is a MRF (material recovery facility aka recycling center), a C&D (Construction & Demolition) recycling operation and a county run maintenance facility all powered by clean renewable energy produced at the facility.