March 7, 2013
The South Burnett Regional Council has temporarily solved highway flooding problems at Wooroolin by digging a small canal to help drain water from the Wooroolin Wetlands.
The council’s roadworks staff built trenches on either side of the Bunya Highway to help drain water from it, but also built a much larger “Wooroolin Canal” to tackle the large volume of water still flowing from the wetlands.
“The amount of water still running from the wetlands down the canal needs to be seen to be believed. The photographs taken don’t show the volume of water still running out of the wetlands,” Mayor Wayne Kratzmann said.
Mayor Kratzmann and Cr Cheryl Dalton congratulated council staff and independent contractors for their work, saying that without the new canal the highway would have been either cut off or down to one lane “for quite some time”.
“Locals haven’t seen water like this for over 80 years. The canal also makes for a nice swim for the fish that were swimming across the highway last week,” Cr Kratzmann said.
However, SBRC General Manager of Infrastructure John Kersnovski has warned that if there’s further rain, the highway in the immediate area may have to return to one-way traffic.
“If we get some additional rain we will have some concerns over the edges of the road. We will continue to monitor the road pavement and ground either side of the highway,” Mr Kersnovski said.
- Latest South Burnett road condition update (4:00pm March 7) 293kb PDF
