A $500,000 bill for unexpected damage to the St Clair sea wall and ''hundreds of thousands'' of dollars so far for the clean-up of slips and road damage after last month's significant rain event, could strain the budgets of a council in savings mode.
The costs follow a warning from council operations staff earlier this year that they had no contingency in their budget for unexpected weather events.
They will now report to councillors that they already face ''significant'' costs to repair damage caused recently by the weather. Many of the bills are yet to come in.
Whether the unforeseen costs will undermine the council's ability to deliver essential front-line services remains to be seen, but they could at least eat into any surplus the council posts for the 2012-13 financial year.
Council operations manager Tony Avery said the report to the council's infrastructure services committee's meeting this month would outline the cost of the weather events so far, and what the total repair bill was expected to be.
It would also examine options for where the money might be drawn from, and any implications of that.
Mr Avery would not give a figure for the total cost for the work or comment on the potential implications for his budget, but noted that while the costs were substantial, they were set against a ''very large'' operations expenditure, anyway.
The repairs required include cleaning up and fixing damaged roads and slips across the city, including a major slip in Blanket Bay Rd that has closed the road and remains too wet for geotechnical engineers to work on safely.
Council roading maintenance engineer Peter Standring said once the slip was surveyed and good foundations found, it would be clearer what was required to reconstruct the road, including any potential property acquisition.
The work required would be major, he said.
He confirmed the cost of shoring up the sea wall had reached $500,000.
Asked how the council would pay for it, finance, strategy and development committee chairman Syd Brown said he was confident the projected cash surplus for the 2012-13 year, which was still to be finalised, would cover the costs of the sea wall and the rain event.
Any cash surplus was usually counted as a carry-forward in the next year's budget, which would be an issue councillors would have to work through.
In April, staff advised councillors the council was heading into this financial year with an operating surplus of more than $8 million, although much of it was savings on paper only and Waipori Fund gains, which were to be returned to the fund.
''Any shocks, like a significant weather event ... could very easily mop up any surplus that there may be at the end of the year,'' council financial controller Maree Clarke warned at the time.
The EQC has received 41 claims from Dunedin for damage related to landslips from June's storm/flooding.
