More troops are joining the volunteers to help in cleaning up the West Coast's Fox River, which is littered with waste for kilometres.
An additional 45 Defence Force personnel are about to arrive in Christchurch on their way to help with the mission.
They will be working alongside the Department of Conservation and a group of volunteers tomorrow.
It's expected the troops will be on site for the next couple of months while they help to remove thousands of tonnes of rubbish scattered along Fox River caused by flooding in March.
An old landfill spewed out 75 kilometres of rubbish along the pristine coastline and riverbed after the severe storm.
Medical waste, needles and asbestos have been found among the rubbish which poured out of an old landfill three months ago.
Department of Conservation Incident Controller Owen Kilgour earlier told 1 NEWS potentially hazardous items are being removed by specialist crews.
"There have been small amounts of medical waste identified, the occasional needle, also asbestos has been found, a number of plastic containers with unknown contents," he said.
DOC took control of the cleanup operation from the Westland District Council and the Government has injected $600,000 into the operation.
Since the job gained publicity, more volunteers have joined the forces - including people throughout the country and visitors from overseas.
The race is on to clean up the rubbish before the spring rain arrives.
Volunteers are trying to clean up decades of rubbish after a huge storm washed a landfill down a world heritage site on the West Coast.
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