$5m road damage bill: Long road back for Ashburton council

Nicole Mathewson Reporter from The Press

Ashburton District Council staff have admitted it's struggling to keep up with the increasing needs of the district's damaged roading network.

A multitude of potholes and crumbled roads on top of regular maintenance obligations are keeping council roading contractors up to their ears with site visits and essential repair work.

Council roading manager Brian Fauth told councillors at last week's activity briefings meeting that the damage bill to the district's network was about $5 million.

Mayor Neil Brown asked how roading staff were going to get its regular maintenance programme back on track after fielding numerous complaints around the state of the roads.

Fauth told the mayor it would not be a quick fix.

"We're trying to get the roads back to the standard they were prior to the flood. At this stage we're well behind."

The majority of council's gravel stockpile, which was originally set aside for planned winter gravelling, has also been used to fill in holes to make roads usable following the May 30-31 flood event.

"A lot of them still require metal to bring them up to the state they were prior to the flooding."

Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency has not provided council an indication of budget to help repair flood-damaged roads, Fauth said.

He hoped the cleanup could be debt-funded rather than omitting something from council's budget.

Reporting by local democracy reporter Adam Burns