April 26, 2016
No butts about Puhinui clean-up
The Manukau Beautification Trust aims to get 2000 people out this weekend to clean up the Puhinui Stream and the Otara Creek.
Operations manager Lincoln Jefferson says people will gather at the Botanic Gardens in Manurewa at 8am Saturday in what's touted as the largest single environmental clean up in New Zealand.
People will be issued with the safety gear and tools they need and then they will be bussed to clean up sites along the 10 kilometre waterway from Redoubt Rd to the Manukau Harbour.
He says the a preliminary survey of 22 sites has identified shopping trolleys, beds, building materials, as well as the usual plastic bottles, wrappers and cigarette butts.
"For every cigarette butt that goes into our water cycle, 7 litres of water gets polluted, and you can imagine there are probably thousands and thousands of cigarette butts down there so it was a whole host of unwanted things down there. It's just been an urban dumping ground basically," Mr Jefferson says.
The Manukau Beautification Trust has been promised a big contingent from Manurewa Marae, which is directly affected by the state of Puhinui Stream.
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