Hundreds turn out across Flintshire for River Dee clean-up

Sep 23 2010 by Dave Goodban, Flintshire Chronicle

Hundreds turn out across Flintshire for River Dee clean-up

MORE than 450 volunteers from across Flintshire cleaned up tonnes of rubbish during this year’s Big Dee Day.

The event, which took place on Friday and Saturday, tackled marine and coastal litter, which blights the Welsh and English coastline of the River Dee.

“The teams collected something in the region of 600 bags of rubbish, about four- five tonnes, and the results are still coming in,” said Mike Taylor, Flintshire’s senior coastal ranger.

“The whole event went very well, it was absolutely brilliant.”

The activity linked conservation, business and residential communities who gave two days up to protecting the coastline, starting at Kingspan at Greenfield Business Park.

The clean-up, which is co-ordinated by Flintshire County Council’s coastal team, includes countryside services from Denbighshire, Flintshire, Wrexham, Wirral and Cheshire West and Chester.

Big-business support came from Corus, Kimberley Clark, BHP Billington, Presthaven Sands, Shotton Paper and Kingspan among others.

The North Wales Wildlife Trust, the RSPB, RNLI and North East Wales Wildlife were involved, as well as a volunteer teams from across the county.

Delyn AM Sandy Mewies, who joined the volunteers, said: “This is an absolutely fantastic event, and it gets bigger and better every year.

“It’s great so many people take part – and the result is brilliant.”