Residents of Metro Vancouver will find their wallets — and perhaps the air they breathe — affected for decades by a region-wide vote on a new garbage-disposal plan Friday.

Metro’s Sewerage and Drainage Board is being asked to approve a $470-million waste-to-energy incinerator, which a staff report says would pay for itself and generate $20 million over 35 years.

Metro planners say air pollution would increase by less than one per cent, and that shipping garbage to the expanded Cache Creek landfill would cost $1.5 billion over the same time period.

Metro chairwoman Lois Jackson calls the waste-to-energy incinerator the “right choice.”

“We have a responsibility to deal with our waste in our own region and not foist that responsibility on others,” she says. “I have listened to concerns by Fraser Valley residents [about air pollution] and have been assured those concerns have been addressed.”

Critics, which include the City of Vancouver, are not convinced the plan will be as cheap or as clean-burning as Metro claims.

The Wilderness Committee’s Ben West says financial assumptions do not include the cost of a new $470-million plant after 35 years.

“The plants generate a lot of steam and a tiny amount of power. There is no cost estimate for delivering the steam, which is to be used for heating purposes, to locations where it can be used,” he says.

He says burning things like plastic water bottles produces “the most deadly toxins known to man.”

“A double-lined, well-regulated landfill is a lesser evil than burning garbage,” West says.

No site for the plant has been disclosed, although West says there have been rumours about putting it on Tsawwassen native land or in New Westminster.

The vote by 30 board members is expected to be tight; the plan narrowly passed the committee stage earlier this month by a 7-5 count.

If the waste-to-energy incinerator passes, it must be approved by B.C.’s Ministry of Environment to go ahead.

The governing Liberals have several of their own MLAs opposing the plan in the Fraser Valley, where air pollution is expected to hit hardest.

The MLAs include Chilliwack’s Barry Penner, who is the Environment Minister.

“I’d be shocked if he signed off on this,” says West.