Council staff sent Port Otago's management a letter in mid-December seeking a meeting to discuss the outstanding costs following the February 12 accident in which a freight train partially demolished the council-owned bridge.
However, when contacted this week, council chief executive Jim Harland said he was yet to receive a reply to the letter.
"As a chief executive, I'm not happy about it. It's been a long time."
Mr Harland was in Auckland when spoken to on Thursday, but said he would be making some inquiries when he got back next week.
He did not know the reason for the delay.
In December, Port Otago chief executive Geoff Plunket told the Otago Daily Times he was still awaiting the DCC letter and the company had "absolutely not" accepted liability for the February 12 accident.
However, depending on the contents of the DCC letter, he doubted the matter would take months to resolve, he said at the time.
"We always try to move these things on as quickly as we can, but we haven't received the letter yet."
Contacted in Hamburg yesterday morning, Mr Plunket confirmed he received the council's letter "around Christmas ".
He said the letter had been referred to the company's insurers for "advice and guidance", along with instructions to finalise their position on its contents by the time Mr Plunket returned to Dunedin next week.
The company and its insurers would then be in a position to "engage with the DCC in dialogue", he said.
Asked about the delay, Mr Plunket said the holiday period, and the insurer's assessment of the letter, had prolonged the situation.
"January is a holiday, right, and I forwarded it to our [insurers]. They have got a process to go through. Clearly, I need their guidance before we can move forward.
"I would like to see this issue resolved."
Last year's crash has been blamed on metal flaps on a collapsible container which flipped up as the train passed beneath the bridge, tearing down the midsection of the bridge.
The container was loaded at South Freight, a division of Port Otago, but it has never been publicly confirmed what caused the flaps to fly up.
Speaking in December, DCC roading projects engineer Evan Matheson told the ODT he did not know if human error, or a mechanical fault, was to blame, but he was only seeking costs from the port company - not KiwiRail.
KiwiRail has also refused to release a report into liability for the accident, with a spokesman telling the ODT "the task of establishing liability may become one for the courts".
Asked again yesterday if Port Otago accepted liability, Mr Plunket said: "I can't comment on liability."
