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Fed-up Cornwall residents tackle Irene bridge mess
A Cornwall Hill Estate resident finally took matters into his own hands as he mobilised the community to clean out an eye-sore at the Irene Bridge last week.
Peter Morey said when he first noticed that the dumping at the site was getting out of control over a month ago, he had to do something about the issue.
“We tried to contact our councillor, but we were given the usual ‘put it in an email’ message, so I decided enough was enough.”
Morey set about getting a team together and reached out to his community, who came together and raised R19 000 in no time.
“The council certainly wasn’t going to [clean it up], it has looked like that for months, and they have made no effort to get it cleaned up properly, or make any effort to stop the illegal dumping… let alone find the ‘dumper’.”
With the funding, Morey got together a team of cleaners and got to work on Wednesday, September 11.
Together, the team managed to fill two skips and remove 12 truckloads of rubbish, and about 30 bake loads of sand and silt that had washed into the drainage ditch.
“The silt that was lying there has probably built up over years, and even with the bakkie loads, we couldn’t reach everything.
“We dug under the road to get it to the silt, and some of the drains were still blocked when we were done.”
Morey organised the skips that were donated by Urban Skip, and Joao Dos Santos from Archstone Construction offered to pay for the trucks.
Several tyres were also dumped at the site, which Frith Westley from the Irene Beautification Committee arranged to be removed by SupaQuik Irene.
The work was finally completed on September 17, but Morey said there was more to be done that required expertise and machinery that they did not have.
“We got it spotless now and hopefully it stays that way,” said Morey, asking that anyone with information about dumping in the area report the illegal behaviour.
“Thank you to all who assisted, supported, waved, hooted, bought cold drinks and sent messages of support, it makes it all worth it.”
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