The list of 60 potential sites for a new pretrial centre in Metro Vancouver has some in those communities bristling.

The list was released after public opposition forced the province to halt plans for a high-security jail across the street from the British Columbia Institute of Technology in Burnaby.

After the uproar, B.C. Solicitor General John van Dongen decided to let mayors in Metro Vancouver, which encompasses 22 municipalities, determine where the pretrial centre should go.

One of the proposed locations is 520 E. Kent Ave., near the Fraser River in south Vancouver.

Members of that community successfully chased a Wal-Mart out of the area in 2005 — and they're vowing to make sure the jail doesn't land there either.

"It just shows that this place has, for so long, been used as a catch-all for everything nobody else wants," said Louise Seto, a member of the group that fought to keep big box stores out the neighbourhood.

"Look at the choices that we've been given. We haven't been given any positive choices for our community at all in terms of the use of our industrial land."

Another possibility is a piece of the Agricultural Land Reserve on Barnston Island in Surrey.

"It certainly shows a disdain for the ability for us to feed ourselves and to maintain agriculture and agricultural land in British Columbia," said Harold Steeves, a Richmond City councillor and the agriculture chair for Metro Vancouver.

"They're building highways through the farmland, they're putting ports on the farmland and now they're talking about putting prisons on the farmland."

The mayors have until Sept. 1 to decide where the 360-bed pretrial centre will end up.