September 6, 2022
Five wet weather events which hit the region between November and July have left the South Burnett Regional Council with a $6.2 million emergency road repair bill.
Worse, this figure is likely to rise as Council staff continue to assess damage caused by the most recent downpour.
In recent months SBRC staff have identified almost 6600 sites on the region’s road network which suffered damage from the first four storms, and had made emergency repairs to almost 4800 of them.
However, July’s storms damaged a further 1327 sites.
So far, only 387 of these – roughly one-quarter – have been attended to.
These figures were released by Roads portfolio chair Deputy Mayor Gavin Jones at September’s Infrastructure standing committee meeting.
Cr Jones revealed that because of July’s storms, Council’s emergency road repair plans have now been pushed out until the end of October.
The size of the task was also testing Council’s resources, staff, machinery and budget to their limits.
“We have never had to deal with flood damage of this scope before, and we ask for the community’s patience as we get through the enormous workload,” Cr Jones said.
He also stressed that temporary emergency works are taken as a necessary first step to ensure public safety before permanent repairs could be assessed for state funding.
He believes the total damage bill – which is still being calculated – will likely be about $25 million, and restoring all the region’s damaged roads to pre-flood conditions could take as long as two years.
Cr Jones said the need to carry out emergency repairs has also had an impact on the Council’s regular road maintenance program.
Both problems are being compounded by a shortage of roadworks contractors, who are in strong demand at the moment.
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A Council spokesperson said on Tuesday that Weeks Road at Goodger would remain closed until works to repair pipes are completed.
The road is currently closed near the intersection with Kingaroy-Cooyar Road.
The spokesperson said repairs could not start until water has subsided.
[UPDATED with clarification]
Some of these emergency repairs are of no use at all. In several places in the Blackbutt area, washed out edges have been filled three, four times with sand in the last six months.
Come another 20 or 30mm of rain and this fine sand is washed out again and again.
Would a heavier material like gravel not last longer? Therefore not needing repair quite so often, saving time and money?
The Nukku Road near the bridge on the Goat Track known as the D’Aguilar Highway is more holes than road and just so dangerous as one has to drive on the incorrect side of the road to exit Nukku Road. It has been like this for so long. The most recent ‘fix’ lasted all of two days!