Ashburton district’s road repair bill to top $1.5m

The Team Reporter from The Press

From local democracy reporter Jonathan Leask:

The recent run of heavy rainfall has caused an estimated $1.5 million of damage to the Ashburton district's already battered roading network.

Ashburton District Council infrastructure services group manager Neil McCann informed the councillors Wednesday that the expected cost of the last few weeks of heavy rainfall events has been initially estimated at $1.5m.

As a comparison, McCann said the district had suffered about $5m worth of damage from the May 2021 flood event.

“We currently are desperately trying to chase potholes,” McCann said.

“We now have three teams out working on road, tidying up and filling in potholes.

“This time of the year it’s really difficult to fix them. We can only temporarily fill until the weather gets better and we can do some decent repairs.”

The council is preparing an application for emergency works funding to cover a large percentage of the damage bill he said.

Roading manager Mark Chamberlain said most damage had occurred in the high country: Double Hill Run Rd, Ashburton Gorge Rd, Hakatere Potts Rd, Hakatere Heron Rd and the roads affected by Dry Creek flooding again.

The council added $300,000 to the previous financial year’s roading repair programme to bring in an extra stabilising machine to focus on potholes.

“A large proportion of that work has stood up really well. A few areas not as well.”

Those failures were the responsibility of the contractors to repair at no extra cost to the council, McCann said.

The council has included an extra $1.7m in the annual plan for major roading repairs.

Sitting mayor Neil Brown said potholes were not an issue unique to Ashburton and had not been helped by the reduced amount of funding coming from Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency to maintain roads.

“Underfunding over the years is starting to show up,” Brown said.

“We have stretched the things out and sweated the asset and we are now paying for it from a lack of funding.”

He said the council applied for more money every year and Waka Kotai was not approving all of it, leaving a shortfall.

All local roads around the country are subject to the FAR (financial assistance rate) of about 51% from Waka Kotahi and 49% from the local council.

Brown had raised the issue with the other Canterbury mayors at the regional transport committee, which he said was investigating the funding shortfall across the Canterbury region and would have a dollar figure at its next meeting.