Flood repairs a focus for 2023

Published on 01 February 2023

One of Byron Shire Council’s main areas of focus in 2023 is managing a $180 million program of flood recovery work designed to provide improvements and solutions to roads and bridges that will be able to stand up to future flood events.

“We are very aware that much of this work will be starting 12 months after the floods and it is a frustrating wait for those in our community who are negotiating damaged roads, bridges and causeways as part of their daily routine,” Phil Holloway, Director Infrastructure Services said.

“Immediately after the floods our teams worked solidly to get temporary access restored to all the areas that we could as well as road and bridge repairs,” Mr Holloway said.

“While this was happening, and we had a clear picture of the damage, we started work on the list of long-term repairs,” he said.

There has been a lot of work happening behind the scenes including identifying and prioritising projects, securing contractors, writing tenders and applying for funding to get these projects off the ground.

“While it is frustrating for our community, it has been challenging for Council as well, because we, along with the other councils in the region, have never dealt with a disaster of this magnitude.

“For a small, regional Council like Byron Shire, a damage bill of more than $180 million, is beyond our financial capacity and we are working with the NSW Government to secure funding and planning scope and detail of each project and sourcing contractors are not things that can be done quickly,” he said.

“Finally, this part of the process has progressed to a point where we can start looking at fixing the damaged roads and bridges properly.

“The good news is that work on repairing  some major drainage infrastructure at upper Huonbrook is progressing and hopefully will be finished by mid-2023.

“When we started this job, we intended to create an interim access for local residents but with the expertise of contractors, we decided to take a little more time to do a long-term remediation for the drainage structures,” Mr Holloway said.

“We still have to install two box culverts and do some revegetation and rehabilitation work and we are hoping this will start in March,” he said.

Tenders for the Federal Drive landslip have closed and are being assessed.

A report will be prepared and is expected to go on the agenda for the consideration of Council in late February.

At Upper Main Arm, reconstruction work is not expected to start until the second quarter 2023 pending approvals from Transport for New South Wales.

In the meantime Council is looking at doing some temporary grading work as an interim measure until the reconstruction work gets underway.

Prior to Christmas the clearing of culverts was finished, along with some other emergency roadwork such as road pavement works at Palmwoods Road.

Council has also prepared applications for additional funding to improve the resilience of the Main Arm Road to withstand future flooding events.

The results of the funding applications, which are expected in early 2023, will inform the extent and type of repairs.  

Work on roads at Upper Wilsons Creek have included some gravel re-sheeting and grading, repairs to table drains and some cleaning out of debris in culverts and causeways.

More long-term work needs to be done in this area, and this is also the subject of an additional funding application to improve the resilience to withstand impacts from future flooding events.

In the meantime, Council continues with its program of projects and road infrastructure maintenance, which is separate to flood recovery projects.

“This is what is referred to as ‘business as usual’ and it is essential that we continue with this work alongside the flood projects because we have commitments that need to be fulfilled to funding bodies and more generally to our entire community,” Mr Holloway said.

“We cannot do flood recovery work until we have funding from the NSW and Australian Governments because we simply do not have the money in reserve to do this,” he said.

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