Pinellas County waste facility employees likely to move with new vendor

Reworld Waste, a company that oversees a Pinellas County waste-to-energy facility, is being replaced by a new vendor Jan 1.

The company announced it had lost the contract to operate the resource recovery facility at 3001 110th Ave. N. in St. Petersburg in a letter posted on the state’s Worker Adjustment Retraining and Notification database. 

The waste management company’s letter said 70 jobs would be lost as part of its leaving, with positions ranging from facilities manager to auxiliary operators affected.

A Pinellas County spokesperson says FCC Environmental Services will take over operations Jan. 1.

While the county’s agreement with FCC does not specifically call for the employees to remain, the staffing plan in the document does say that retaining current employees “is of foremost importance to the successful implementation, development and completion of the work.”

(The spokesperson provided a copy of the agreement.)

The Pinellas Resource Recovery Facility, according to the county’s website, “includes three municipal waste combustor units (Units 1 through 3), two steam turbine-electric generators, and associated support facilities.”

According to the county, it “works like a power plant, except that it uses garbage as fuel and converts garbage into electrical energy.”