Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to remove the 50,000 tons a day of commercial and residential garbage generated in the city could suffer a significant blow today in the City Council.

The plan has sparked intense debate and lobbying on both sides of City Hall, particularly because one of the four transfer stations proposed for use is on the Upper East Side, in the district of the council speaker, Gifford Miller.

Mr. Miller, one of four Democrats trying to knock Mr. Bloomberg out of office, has said that the East River site is too close to residential streets and would generate too much truck traffic in Manhattan. He has a news conference scheduled for today, in which he and several colleagues are to unveil proposed revisions to the plan. Dropping the East 91st Street station is undoubtably among their suggestions.

After postponing a vote on whether to allow the rebuilding of several trash-transfer stations that form the foundation of Mr. Bloomberg’s plan, however, the council has run out of time and must vote today. Late last night, several sources predicted the plan – while it might get approval from one committee – would be voted down by the full council.

The mayor’s proposal, which has been supported by environmental and public-health groups, is a 20-year system to float trash out of the city by barge instead of removing it using diesel trucks, as is done now.

The current system, which nearly everyone agrees must be overhauled, was intended to be a temporary arrangement after the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island was shut more than four years ago. The city essentially backed into it after Mayor Giuliani promised Staten Island residents he would close “the dump” that had been accepting all of the city’s trash for decades.

Earlier this week, Council Member Michael McMahon, chairman of the council’s sanitation committee and a Miller supporter, said the mayor’s plan was a “piecemeal” proposal that would be like buying a “pig in the poke.”

If the council withholds land-use approval, the Bloomberg administration will have to go back to the drawing board.

A spokesman for the mayor, Jordan Barowitz, said it was only fair to include the Upper East Side facility.

An advisory sent out by Mr. Miller’s office yesterday said his plan would be “fairer, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly.”