Tulsa's Oxley Nature Center Cleaning Up After Recent Flooding

The clean-up continues at Oxley Nature Center, in Mohawk Park, after flooding breached an old landfill and pushed trash over five acres of woods.

This weekend 300 volunteers from Church on the Move worked to clean up trash and make repairs to fences and trails damaged by the flood.

Park Director Larry Reece is encouraged by the outpouring of support.

"They were just all over the park fixing things up, it's incredible. We couldn't have done this in a year with park resources and they did it in a day."

The church volunteers filled four large dumpsters with trash, and while they had loaders for heavy work, much of the trash pickup was done by hand. Volunteers cleared about half of the area that was blanketed with mostly plastic trash.

"People like their parks and they like the nature center, they want to get the woods back to the way it was because they want to come here and see a clean forest, so they''ll make it happen," said Reece.

More trash is being revealed now that Bird Creek's water is lowering. The heavier trash from the landfill didn't go as far and much of it remain on the banks and is likely on the bottom, still hidden by the muddy water.

There is a plan in the works to cap the landfill to make sure it doesn't spill out again, and still a need for volunteers to finish the job of cleaning up Oxley.