Volunteers in tears as full scale of Westland landfill flood disaster becomes clear

Friday, 5 April 2019

Rubbish has spread up to about 300km along the West Coast from Okarito to Martins Bay in Fiordland.

Clean-up of rubbish along 300km of West Coast beaches is expected to take 'a number of weeks'.

Extreme weather caused an old Westland District Council dump beside the river to erode on March 26. Rubbish floated downstream and was washing up about 300km along South Westland's pristine beaches.

It will take weeks to clean up rubbish strewn through West Coast beaches

Westland Mayor Bruce Smith said officials from Westland District Council, the Department of Conservation, Ministry for the Environment, and waste experts from EnviroNZ met on Friday with Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage and West Coast MP Damian O'Connor to plan the next steps for the massive cleanup.

The Fox Glacier landfill operated from the 1960s until the early 2000s. It was eroded by the Fox River during the huge storm event on March 26 and 27.

A map showing the spread of the rubbish from Okarito down to Fiordland.

Drone footage shows full extent of the damage to the Waiho Bridge, near Franz Josef on the West Coast, in March 2019.

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An aerial view of the rebuild of the Waiho Bridge near Franz Josef.

* Asbestos dump found on the West Coast

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The New Zealand Defence Force has sent New Zealand Army engineers to help rebuild the Waiho Bridge near Franz Josef.

The problem was not identified by the council until March 31.

Rubbish flowing down the river has been seen on the coast as far north as Okarito, and south to Martins Bay in Fiordland.

The New Zealand Defence Force has sent New Zealand Army engineers to work with the New Zealand Transport Agency and engineering and construction company Downer to rebuild South Westland's Waiho Bridge.

Smith said 'good progress' was being made. Rubbish was no longer flowing into the Fox River after contractors successfully diverted the river on Thursday. The next step was to install rock protection to the area until a long term solution was found.

On Thursday, 22 volunteers were taken by helicopters to remove rubbish from remote beaches. More staff and volunteers will arrive over the weekend, which will boost the effort from early next week.

Volunteer co-ordinator Mike Bilodeau said people were contacting him from all over New Zealand keen to help and donate to the cleanup effort. Local school children had arrived with baking for the cleanup crews.

'I just got an email from a guy saying 'there are 10 of us coming from Christchurch we will be with you tomorrow and we can give you five days',' he said.

Bilodeau did not know how long it would take to clean up as more rubbish was washed up with every tide.

The Fox River was full of rubbish, he said.

Many of the volunteers reported finding large numbers of small milk containers used in motels.

Bilodeau is originally from Canada and has been living in New Zealand since 2010, and Okarito for about five years. He was working as a guide at night bringing tourists to see kiwi, but had no work since the Waiho Bridge collapsed in the flood.

When he first saw rubbish washing up on Okarito beach after the storm, he walked along the coast to Franz Josef picking up rubbish.

'What I saw made me cry. I got back to Okarito and realised no-one knew how bad this was, and just started emailing media and anyone I could think of to try and raise awareness and get help,' he said.

People should contact the council on foxlandfillresponse@westlanddc.govt.nz if they have information about rubbish spreading, and bilofro@gmail.com to volunteer.

Meanwhile, the NZ Transport Agency said it was on track to reopening the Waiho River Bailey bridge on April 12. It had been destroyed in the March storm.

NZTA system manager Pete Connors said the bridge building team was onto the third span of the seven-span bridge.