Word Tuesday that Victoria will outlaw the international export of B.C.’s garbage was good news for White Rock, said Mayor Catherine Ferguson.

“We never, ever wanted it coming through the city,” said Ferguson of garbage that was to have been shipped by rail, including along the city’s waterfront, to the U.S.

The ban, a highlight of the provincial government’s throne speech, blocks a Metro Vancouver plan to send up to 600,000 tonnes of garbage south via trash trains.

– with files from Jeff Nagel

The mayors and city councillors of the Metro board voted in April to seek Victoria’s permission to export the waste on the basis there is insufficient time left to replace the region’s nearly full Cache Creek landfill, set to close in late 2010.

White Rock endorsed the plan after extensive debate, as “the lesser of two evils.”

Metro Vancouver’s stated aim is to build new waste-to-energy plants within the region to turn garbage into power, although there are still rival proposals afoot to expand the Cache Creek dump or to send the waste for incineration on Vancouver Island.

Metro waste management committee chair Marvin Hunt said he is frustrated Victoria won’t agree to a new solid-waste management plan allowing exports.

“It leaves us in a bit of a lurch,” Hunt said. “Nobody likes any of the solutions we have right now. But we have to find some solutions somewhere – unless you plan on putting it on the legislature’s lawn.”

Ferguson agreed the roadblock creates challenges in where to send garbage. But at the same time, it’s an opportunity to “find our own solutions.”

“We have to be self-sustainable,” she said.

Hunt said the only currently approved destination that could handle Metro’s garbage glut is the Vancouver Landfill in Delta, on the edge of Burns Bog.

The dump there would have to accept double the current incoming volume of waste over the next five years to handle the loads that are now trucked to Cache Creek.

Hunt said it might be possible that Metro could cut a deal with the City of Vancouver, which owns the landfill, to make more use of the site for five years – until new waste-fired plants can be built – and then dramatically reduce loads to the dump.

But intensifying use of the landfill in Delta, even for a short period, is not the answer, said Dr. Roy Strang, Peace Arch News’ environmental columnist. Time would be better spent figuring out how to reduce waste, he said.

“What are we doing to minimize the volume of what we use?” Strang said.

New waste-fired energy plants are to be built in Metro Vancouver by 2015, and the district plans public consultations in the months ahead on technology and, eventually, location.

Sending waste south would have been a stop-gap measure.

The main U.S. contender to take the garbage is Rabanco’s landfill in southern Washington. Waste would be sent there by rail through White Rock and South Surrey. Whistler and Powell River already send the garbage they can’t handle south.

The garbage crunch facing the region stems from Metro’s collapsed decade-long effort to build a new landfill near Ashcroft. The region gave up on Interior landfills after aboriginal opposition to the Ashcroft site and the province’s refusal to approve it.

Cache Creek Mayor John Ranta called the province’s decision a good one.

He hopes a major expansion of the existing landfill there will be approved, preserving 120 local jobs.

A decision on a small, short-term addition to the Cache Creek landfill – extending its life to 2012, while a more intensive environmental assessment proceeds on a proposed expansion that would add another 17 to 23 years – is imminent, confirmed environment minister Barry Penner.

He defended the decision to ban waste exports.

“We believe it’s responsible to look after your own environmental problems instead of exporting them to someone else,” Penner said.