The Southern Downs Regional Council has been working on flood disaster recovery since March 2020. In addition to the normal Council works budget, more than $16 million has been spent on the flood repair program to date and a large portion of the works now expected to reach completion by June 2024.
Road works that are in progress or have been scheduled for the Allora Region:
- Bridge Repairs to be carried out on Kital Road, Berat
- Culvert Replacement planned for Merivale Street Allora and Talgai West Road, Talgai
Under favourable weather conditions, Council operates a twelve-month capital works program that addresses routine maintenance and includes new projects.
However when a flood event impacts the region, a three-month emergency works program is triggered with funding immediately applied to making the road network safe.
Due to back-to-back events between November 2021 and May 2022, the focus of works has by necessity been on emergency works to restore safe access across the road network, wherever possible.
The compound effect is that the 2020, 2021 and 2022 emergency works programs has put the 2022-23 capital works program back by nine months.
Southern Downs Mayor Vic Pennisi said “We currently have thousands of kilometres of road to repair, circa 300 culverts to replace or refurbish, hundreds of table drains to clean out and more potholes than ever experienced in our lifetime.
“The prediction is that these repairs will take somewhere in the vicinity of two years and that is on the basis that we do not get any further rain.”
This article appeared in the Allora Advertiser, 30 November 2022.
