Florence Landfill is set to close next fall. But members of the “Dump the Dump” movement want it done faster.
The landfill, located in southeast Gainesville, a historically Black and low-income area, has been the subject of controversy for years. Nearby residents have been fighting the landfill since 2018, expressing environmental concerns over air quality and the purity of local water sources.
The landfill’s special-use permit expired in 2024, but at the same time, a 2022 state-issued emergency order extended closure until August 2026. Now, many residents’ wishes will come to fruition as the dump is set to close for good in nine months.
For many local activists, it's hard to separate the issue from what 21-year-old UF management graduate student Gabrielle Keller referred to as “inner-Gainesville politics.”
“It's really an environmental racism issue when it boils down to it,” she said. “If it were any other part of Gainesville, it wouldn't exist in the first place.”
Keller, vice president of UF’s Public Interest Communications Student Association, introduced the campaign to club members last year. Since then, PICSA has committed itself to helping residents against the landfill.
The club created petitions and attended Alachua County Commission meetings to raise awareness for the movement. Its efforts succeeded in January, when the commission allowed Gainesville residents to petition the state for the landfill’s early closure.
“Businesses go out of business, businesses move,” said Jyoti Parmar, an organizing representative for the Sierra Club of Florida. “It's time for this business to close out of that neighborhood.”
Community members have a shared responsibility to consider the landfill’s safety risks and neighborhood impact, she added.
Parmar, who has been fighting against the landfill since 2018, feels compelled to speak out against the environmental and racial injustice the community faces.
She attributes her fight to her “strong sense of justice.” She hopes others will feel the same.
“This has been too long an issue that has somehow escaped corrective action, and it is past time to fix this,” Parmar said.
Johnell Gainey, an East Gainesville resident, also believes the landfill’s closure is long overdue. Gainey grew up with the dump just 368 yards from his parents’ front door.
He believes these residents shouldn’t feel indebted to the landfill owner, Paul Florence, who has a history of offering favors and services to locals.
For him, the removal of Florence Landfill is just the first step in the fight against a system of injustice.
“You can't look at the whole forest,” he said. “You got to look at one tree. If it's in your way, you got to work on just that tree.”
The landfill represents the city’s shortcomings in developing East Gainesville, Gainey said.
He hopes that closing the landfill will offer the area and the people who live there more opportunities.
“I want to really start trying to chip at the real system and come up with a new system, a system where we are involved in making the rules and have some say-so and some input on what's right and what's wrong,” Gainey said.
Yelaine Aguilar, a 20-year-old UF public relations junior and PICSA president, believes student involvement can help the cause.
She urged students to recognize the impact the landfill can have on the natural landscapes and areas they enjoy.
“The dump is an issue that feels really far from the UF campus,” Aguilar said. “Anything that we don't see is hard for us to connect to, but really it is right there.”
Despite PICSA’s work, some residents neighboring the landfill support its continued operation. Richard Hamann, an emeritus associate in environmental law at UF, is among them.
Hamann, who has lived near the landfill since 1983, observed the wrongdoings of previous landfill owners. They failed to comply with county regulations, he said.
Florence, the current owner, has been considerate, removing potentially harmful items from the site and offering to clean up plots of land covered in debris, he said.
“He's been a great neighbor,” Hamann said. “He's been helpful to not just me, but lots of people in the community.”
Florence’s management style offers stability, he said. He worries what might happen if someone else were to take over and the troubles Florence would face from losing the landfill.
It’s unclear what will happen to the plot if the landfill is closed.
Contact Grace Larson at glarson@alligator.org. Follow her on X @graceellarson.
Grace is a first year journalism student, serving as city/county commission reporter for the Fall 2025 semester. While she has not previously been on staff, her early journalism experience can be attributed to Devil's Advocate, her high school newspaper. When she is not writing, Grace enjoys staying active by running, weight lifting, hiking and doing yoga. Her other pastimes include thrifting and working on random art projects.
