More than two years after a slip damaged Fruitgrowers Rd, the future of the road is still hanging in the balance.
The road near Clyde provides access to Lake Dunstan, the Weatherall Creek picnic area and the Dunstan Arm Rowing Club base.
Its future will be debated at a Central Otago District Council meeting today.
It was closed for two months following the October 2013 slip, but one lane was reopened in mid-December that year.
The slip was about 70m wide and 50m high and involved 23,000cu m of material.
In a report to today's council meeting, roading manager Julie Muir said detailed design work on the project revealed the slopes either side and under the existing slip area were potentially unstable and this called into question what benefit the council would gain by carrying out remedial work.
The council and NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) had agreed to spend up to $300,000 to remove some slip material, seal a lane wide enough for a heavy truck and construct a basic catch-fence.
"The factor of safety that will be achieved will be less than originally envisaged and is likely to only be marginally higher than currently exists. This will result in ongoing maintenance costs.''
The geotechnical designs showed the project was likely to cost as much as $500,000 and could be higher.
Various options had been explored, including closing the road, making it an emergency route only, restricting it to rowing club users and heavy traffic with over-dimension loads, giving full public access with minor works and monitoring and some remaining safety risk or full public access with the risk removed.
"Closure of this road to all or a particular group of users would be significant, as this area has a history of wide public interest within Central Otago,'' Ms Muir said.
She favoured full public access with minor mitigation work and monitoring and some remaining risk to the public.
"This option does not completely remove the risk of a road user being hit by a falling rock or landslide. The only achievable and affordable way to completely remove this risk would be to close the road.''
The work would cost about $88,000 and the annual cost of monitoring and maintenance would be $12,000 if only minor rock work was needed.
She recommended negotiations be held between Contact Energy, the council and NZTA to fund the project.
