Marlborough District Council says repairs to the region’s roads after the recent back-to-back storms are likely to cost $20 million, with the Government agreeing to fund most of the cost.
Marlborough Roads staff and contractors have been working to fix more than 780 faults across the road network caused by the storms in June and July. Of those, 133 faults have so far been fixed.
The council said emergency repair work response activities have cost $8m and recovery activities are expected to cost $12m, with NZ Transport Agency/Waka Kotahi agreeing to increase its funding assistance rate for response work to 91% ($7.28m) and 81% for recovery activities ($9.72m).
Regional land transport committee chair councillor Scott Adams said he was pleased Waka Kotahi had acknowledged the challenges the district was facing.
He said the first storm on June 27 had the biggest impact across the district, with the worst damage in the Awatere Valley, Northbank Rd and Port Underwood Rd. There were also several slips on Queen Charlotte Dr, including a large slip between Ngākuta Bay and Momorangi Bay.
Further storms had caused more damage since then.
“Communities are still impacted by the damage with restricted access to Northbank Rd due to a very large slip 2km in and also Port Underwood Rd from Oyster Bay to Rārangi is still closed because of a large dropout.”
The Northbank Rd slip was expected to cost more than $1m to fix.
“This slip is 35m high, 60m across and contains around 20,000 cubic metres of material. That’s the equivalent of eight Olympic sized swimming pools. By the time contractors have finished on site, around 2500 truckloads worth of material are expected to have been removed.”
By August 12, 11,800 cubic metres of material had been removed from the site at a rate of around 800 cubic metres per day.
Northbank Rd remained closed from 9am to 4pm Monday to Saturday, with lunchtime openings 12pm to 1pm on Wednesdays and Saturdays to allow repair works to be carried out.
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