Mayor Bloomberg’s detailed proposal for disposing of the city’s waste in the next 20 years envisions delivery of commercial waste by private firms to a wide array of city processing plants, not just a station on the Upper West Side.

When the broad strokes of the plan were unveiled earlier this month, city officials said “a substantial amount” of commercial waste in the city would be directed to the marine transfer station on the Hudson River off West 59th Street.

Council Member Michael McMahon, a Democrat of Staten Island who is chairman of the council’s waste management committee, received a draft of the full plan Friday and said he was surprised to discover that the mayor would like to increase the number of marine transfer stations that handle commercial waste.

“It seems to make more of a commitment to capturing some of the commercial trash than we have been told,” Mr. McMahon told The New York Sun in an interview. “They aren’t just talking about 59th Street for commercial waste, but the plan also has some provisions to capture it in other marine transfer stations.”

Most of Manhattan’s commercial waste – the garbage produced by restaurants and businesses – will go through the 59th Street station, he said, and other boroughs will handle some of their own commercial waste.

Currently, nearly half the commercial waste produced in the city is from Manhattan, but most of it is taken to Brooklyn and the Bronx. Eventually, most of the city’s commercial waste is trucked to out-of-state landfills.

The mayor’s plan as currently written envisions a system in which commercial waste can come into the Department of Sanitation system in the borough in which it is generated, but only if the system can handle it. The sanitation department plans to work with the city’s businesses to find the most economical way to incorporate the commercial waste.

“The big question is how do you get them to come to your facilities without forcing anybody,” the commissioner of sanitation, John Doherty, told the Sun in an interview this fall. “You want to ease the tensions in the South Bronx and Brooklyn where all the Manhattan waste goes. You want to get Manhattan to stand up more themselves.”

Commercial waste is just a small component in the mayor’s long-awaited 20-year solid-waste plan, which aims to keep a lid on the city’s garbage costs. Those expenses have been escalating with the scant availability of landfill space and the rising price of transporting it out of state.

Mr. Bloomberg’s plan can take effect only if it is eventually passed by the City Council and the state Legislature. Mr. McMahon said he expects the plan will be modified before it is approved by the council.

The precise mix of marine transfer stations and private stations will probably change from the mayor’s proposal, he said. The council has budgeted $140,000 to pay for an independent consultant to help vet Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal.

“At this point all I can say is that we have an awful lot of work to do,” Mr. McMahon, who is holding hearings on the recycling portion of the plan today, said. “It will take three to six months to come up with a final plan. We’ll be able to work out changes, but I would be less than honest if I said that where the M.T.S.’s are opened wasn’t an issue.”