Galway County Council is expected to take up to two weeks to remove 600 tonnes of dumped rubbish and discarded waste on a two-mile stretch of ditches and bogland outside Tuam.
The clean up is one of the biggest of its kind undertaken in the county.
Indiscriminate dumping in the rural area around Cloonthue has hit such a crisis point that Galway County Council is also installing 24-hour CCTV cameras in an attempt to catch the culprits. It is also stepping up the number of patrols.
Some council workers however fear that unless those responsible are apprehended and punished in the courts, the problem will recur within months.
John Frawley, executive engineer with the environment section of the council, explained that all of the rubbish was being transferred to Galway where it would have to be segregated for recycling.
"If these people had simply taken the time to bring along the plastic containers to the local civic amenity site, it would have cost nothing," Mr Frawley remarked.
He estimated the clean-up would cost at least €15,000 and the cost of installing surveillance cameras would be in addition to this.
The drive-by dumpers have strewn the rubbish into the deep ditches alongside the narrow bog road.
"It's very hard to clean up this type of dumping, it's really been spread about all over the place and has got caught up with vegetation and soil," one council worker said.
A large digger is on site to lift and move the piles of rubbish but council workers also have to wade into the heaps of waste and collect it up by hand.
Galway County Council says it does not know who is responsible for the dumping.
Rural areas on the outskirts of Tuam have become major blackspots for illegal and indiscriminate dumping of waste. The council is testing various types of CCTV surveillance cameras for detecting incidents like this and intends to install a system.
A spokesman for the environment section said the community wardens patrolled and monitored these areas on a regular basis.