Mass cleanup of Fox River expected to be completed by mid-August

Thursday, 1 August 2019

The massive job of cleaning up after a storm exposed about 135,000 kilograms of rubbish from an old landfill is expected to be finished within weeks.

Days of heavy rain battered the West Coast in March, causing widespread damage and polluting the Fox River with rubbish from a historic Westland District Council dump site.

The Department of Conservation (DOC) took over the cleanup efforts on June 19 and on Thursday said they expected the job would be completed by mid-August.

DOC staff have worked alongside members of the New Zealand Defence Force and hundreds of volunteers to collected about 11,730 bags of rubbish from the 21 kilometres of river and 64km of coastline affected by the rubbish spill.

**READ MORE:

* Defence force and volunteers ramp up Fox River clean up efforts

* Plastic pollution is putting NZ's 'clean green' image at risk

* Heart-wrenching sight for Operation Tidy Fox volunteers**

Operation Tidy Fox incident controller Owen Kilgour said the worst affected area, which is about 5km downstream from the Fox Highway Bridge, was almost completely cleared of all visible rubbish.

'Fast progress' was also being made on the lower 16km of riverbed and the coastline.

'The fact that the end is in sight will be a boost for more than 700 dedicated volunteers who have spent time picking rubbish out on the riverbed.'

Kilgour said some of the rubbish had been buried below the riverbed, while some had been washed out to sea and was expected to wash back up onto nearby beaches in the coming months.

'Westland District Council is responsible for the environmental effects of the landfill spill and we will work with them to put in place a monitoring and clean-up programme to manage the effects of the rubbish spill over the medium to long term,' he said. 

The historic Westland District Landfill was closed in the early 2000s. .

People can find more about the cleanup on DOC's website.