Metro Vancouver politicians were scheduled to vote on Friday on a plan to build a garbage incinerator in the region, a plan Mayor Sharon Gaetz and other Fraser Valley politicians have vocally opposed for months.

Last week, Metro's solid waste committee recommended building at least one trash incinerator in the region despite widespread opposition from Fraser Valley municipal and provincial politicians concerned about increased pollution in an already fragile airshed. Even some Metro mayors, including Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, oppose the plan.

The Metro board members and senior staffers that have pushed the idea of burning more than one million tonnes of waste a year were undaunted by the opposition heard during consultation meetings held over recent months.

But beyond the Lower Mainland opposition to dealing with Metro's trash within Metro, there are municipalities and corporations clamouring for the garbage.

The remote Vancouver Island community of Gold River and area First Nations are using social media to send a message to Environment Minister Barry Penner in support of the option of sending the garbage by barge to a proposed incinerator on the island to be built by U.S. company Covanta Energy.

Mayor Craig Anderson and Chief Mike Maquinna of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation want to present Penner with a petition of support from 318 residents.

The proposal by Gold River fits with Metro's secondary position, which is to send garbage to an incinerator out of region.

Anderson hopes Metro will consider barging its trash to Gold River.

"We know there's still a bidding process, but we're so far ahead," said Anderson, pointing to the environmental approval Covanta has received for the project.

Then there is Belkorp Environmental Services Ltd., which operates the Cache Creek landfill. Months ago the company pointed out that the Village of Cache Creek and the Ashcroft and Bonaparte Indian bands support the idea of continuing to use the landfill. The dump was slated to close in 2012 until it was granted an environmental assessment certificate in January that would add between 17 and 25 years to its life.

A year ago B.C. waste management company Wastech Services completed a test of a fully-loaded transport truck fueled by liquefied natural gas (LNG) on the heavily-travelled 250-kilometre trip between Vancouver and Cache Creek to demonstrate a cleaner-burning, lower-emission solution to the diesel trucks that currently ship the trash.

There was even an innovative proposal to attempt to acquire the natural gas to fuel the vehicles from the landfill site itself, by capturing and purifying biogas generated by the decomposition at the dump.

The Metro board was scheduled to vote on the incineration plan on July 30. If approved it will go to Penner for final approval.

Penner will likely be in a bind if the Metro board approves the plan given opposition in his own riding to the plan and that he has previously said Metro has other options besides in-region incineration, including expanding the Cache Creek landfill or the Gold River incinerator.