A social media call for volunteers resulted in hundreds of West Coasters turning out for a mass clean up after the storm spewed plastic bags from a nearby rubbish dump across a Greymouth beach.
Grey District Mayor Tony Kokshoorn told 1 NEWS he posted on Facebook saying, "It won't take long. Loaders have done their job. Now it is up to us".
"I said 'hey, we're having a working bee', and that's that."
Mr Kokshoorn told Radio New Zealand last week the storm eroded a closed rubbish dump, pulling the plastic bags out of the ground over a 20 kilometres area on the Cobden coast.
About 200 people rolled up their sleeves to help on Waitangi Day, only taking a few hours to collect tens of thousands of plastic bags that threatened to go out to sea.
"It was an amazing community effort," Mr Kokshoorn told 1 NEWS.
He said the area is often looked at as not being environmentally friendly, but the clean up was a "perfect" way to show the passion the local West Coasters have for their environment.
It was only a week ago when the remnants of an ex-cyclone ripped through the West Coast, taking off roofs, destroying windows and causing Greymouth town centre to close.
But already it's "back to normal" for the West Coast.
"Today's a scorcher," Mr Kokshoorn said. "It's business as usual."
However the area doesn't want a repeat of last week's plastic covered beach, injecting up to $1 million into the rubbish dump for repairs.
"We're not messing around,' he said.
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