Dealing with trash is a stinky, expensive problem -- and Metro Vancouver wants your help, and opinion, on its new draft garbage plan.

With luck, residents will go through the plan and make comments a little more quickly than the regional district's board members, who wrangled over the plan for five hours Friday before voting to release it for a 60-day consultation period.

After consultation, the plan will be submitted to the provincial Environment Ministry for approval.

A new plan was required because the existing landfill at Cache Creek will run out of space in 2011. The provincial government has approved a plan for a $100-million expansion of the Cache Creek facility that will extend its use for another 17 to 25 years -- but it still has to be built.

A landfill will cost $1.5 billion over 35 years, a Metro Vancouver study indicates.

Conversely, building an incinerator to burn waste and turn it into energy at a cost in excess of $400 million would end up turning a profit of $20 million after 35 years.

The Fraser Valley Regional District opposes incinerators because of the effect on the airshed. Also critical are groups such as the Wilderness Committee, whose spokesman Ben West highlights the risk to health from tiny "nanoparticles" that scrubbers on incinerators would fail to catch.

"Our garbage is full of all kinds of toxic materials and we shouldn't be breathing it in," he said.

The final solution is dependent on what residents say, according to Metro chairwoman Lois Jackson, mayor of Delta.

But it also has to be something that wins approval of the province, which initially sent Metro back to the waste drawing board when it rejected the regional district's plan to put a landfill on the Ashcroft Ranch it had purchased and which was just up the road from Cache Creek.

There was a last-minute attempt by Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and his fellow directors from Vancouver council to put targets on waste reduction, and eliminate incineration. That was rejected by the board over cost implications.

The details of the plan is available online at www.metrovancouver.org.

The consultation will include the Fraser Valley, Metro residents, First Nations and the business community.