Last week, once in a generation rains soaked the West Coast, causing a major environmental disaster.
Rivers swelled into floods, floods that destroyed the Waiho Bridge.
Floods that also ripped apart an historic landfill beside the Fox River emptying a decade’s worth of trash into the ocean.
Plastic, microplastics, glass and all kinds of waste is now strewn along a West Coast beach.
Forest and Bird are saying this could be New Zealand's worst environmental disaster, even worse than the Rena oil spill.
Teams of locals have been trying desperately to clean the rubbish up.
Late this afternoon the Government confirmed how far the rubbish had spread. It originated in the Fox River and has moved as far north as Okarito and as far south as Martins Bay.
Watch the video above to get a sense of the scale of what the clean up teams are dealing with.
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