Whether Gold River ends up burning Metro Vancouver's garbage could come down to pollution politics versus cold cash.

The chances of the Lower Mainland's trash finding it way to the north Island inched forward this week when Environment Minister Terry Lake approved Metro Vancouver's waste-management plan.

It's still far from a done deal, though. The outcome could, in fact, be determined by a tug-of-war between the high cost of barging garbage to the Island and the political price of disposing of it at home.

Metro, representing two dozen Lower Mainland municipalities, has to decide how to get rid of the 500,000 tonnes of garbage shipped annually to a Cache Creek landfill that is due to close in 2015.

After much internal wrangling, the Metro board adopted a plan last June that includes incinerating garbage in a waste-toenergy plant (that is, one in which rubbish goes in and electricity comes out). Lake gave his approval Monday, though with conditions that Metro work with the neighbouring Fraser Valley Regional District, where the prospect of more emissions being pumped into already polluted skies has politicians even more choked than normal, before building a plant in the region.

Metro hasn't flat-out said it wants to build locally, but that would appear to be its preference.

A report says it could net $20 million over 35 years by erecting a $500-million plant in its own backyard, while the alternative of shipping waste out of region - read Gold River - would cost $1.8 billion over the same term.

Some of the more leftleaning directors are said to like the idea of building their own plant, while others would prefer going the private-sector route. Among the private-sector suitors is the Canucks-owning Aquilini family, which is looking to build a waste-toenergy facility on the Tsawwassen First Nation reserve.

Should the political hurdles of an in-region plant prove too high, the answer could be in Gold River, where New Jersey-based multinational Covanta Energy wants to build on the site of a pulp mill that shut down in 1999.

Unlike politicians in the Fraser Valley, those on the north Island are ready to welcome the Lower Mainland's garbage with open arms.

Actually, they say it wouldn't be garbage, but something called refusederived fuel, trash reduced to what looks like bales of fluff extracted from the lint screen of a dryer. Mayor Terry Anderson said this year that emissions from the power plant would be one one-hundredth of those from the old pulp mill.

Residual ash from the plant would be encapsulated and shipped 10 kilometres to the site of the old municipal dump.

The Covanta option is backed by both the municipality and the nearby Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation, acting mayor Kirsty Begon said Tuesday. Gold River expects it would see a $1.2-billion economic impact over the life of the deal.

That includes $500,000 a year in property taxes for a village with a $2.2-million annual budget, Anderson said, plus 100 full-time power plant jobs in a community that was gutted when the pulp mill shut down. Construction could mean 1,000 jobs for three, four years.

Environmental assessments have been done and permits are in place, Begon said. She figures that if the Metro board were to act soon, Covanta could have the Gold River plant running as early as the end of 2014, well before the Cache Creek contract runs out.

That seems ambitious. The Metro Vancouver board is far from unanimous, and environmentalists say the fight hasn't even begun. The Wilderness Committee's Ben West says Metro's real answer is not incineration, but the diversion of more waste through recycling and composting. Currently, 55 per cent of trash is diverted from the dump.

Lake set a target of 70 per cent, but West thinks 90 is possible.

He thinks the Fraser Valley politicians are right to worry. "The valley has a very unique air shed," West said. "That being said, I'm worried about this facility in any location."

He believes that feeling will spread.

"I think most people on Vancouver Island haven't heard yet that Metro Vancouver wants to send its garbage to the Island to burn."