Metro Vancouver is hosting a regional forum in Chilliwack next week to clear the air about its waste management plans.

"It’s tough to have a calm, rational, informed discussion about solid waste management," reads Metro's cheeky online description of the upcoming meetings. "But we’d like to try."

Metro waste management committee chair Marvin Hunt said the goal is to share what they've "discovered" about managing the tonnes of garbage produced on the Lower Mainland.

"But as soon as we talk about waste-to-energy, it's instantly about incineration, pollution and killing everyone," Hunt said in a phone interview from Toronto. "Then it becomes a whole emotional discussion."

The latest draft of Metro's waste management plan should be out this fall.

And with hot-button issues like waste-to-energy incineration thrown into the mix, "everybody has strong opinions," according to the Metro information.

But several Fraser Valley politicians, like Chilliwack Mayor Sharon Gaetz and FVRD chair Patricia Ross, expressed opposition the idea of burning waste with incinerators early on in the process. They cited the region's challenges with bad air quality and the potential health impacts of incineration to valley residents.

Waste-to-energy technology, or WTE, is described online as the incineration process of solid waste which is converted into thermal energy by generating steam and driving electrical turbines.

Hunt said local government officials asked Metro hold the public meetings on to share the information they've gathered about incineration and landfilling waste.

The current scenario being explored by Metro envisions both waste-to-energy and landfills to be used, but with an emphasis on shifting from landfills toward WTE.

With the Throne Speech recently showing that the B.C. government is against the idea of Metro exporting its garbage to U.S. landfills, Hunt said the prospect of international export of waste being prohibited would change very little.

"It just changes one piece of the puzzle," he said, adding that it gives them a five-year window to get something else going. They were authorized to extend the life of the Cache Creek landfill for almost two years, to the end of 2012.

In the meantime they say they've done the research. They've looked at the alternatives, at the health impacts of WTE, and the changes to air quality which are expected to affect the Fraser Valley, with its sensitive airshed.

Metro's regional forums are: Sept. 16, 7 p.m. at the Coast Chilliwack Hotel in Chilliwack, as well as Vancouver (Sept. 15), Abbotsford (Sept. 15), and New Westminster (Sept. 16). More details at http://www.metrovancouver.org.

jfeinberg@theprogress.com