And the bridge could reopen "within the fortnight" as the Waitaki District Council’s million-dollar-plus clean-up continued, council roading manager Michael Voss said yesterday. The bridge at the edge of Oamaru’s Victorian precinct was expected to take the longest to reopen, after the July 21 storm when Oamaru received 161.2mm of rain in a 24-hour period.
Early last week, 36 roads in the district were closed due to flooding or damage, but yesterday only Doctors Creek Rd, Grange Hill Rd, Hooke St, River Rd extension, Shag Point Rd, Springfield Rd, Uxbridge Rd and the Humber St Bridge remained closed or partly closed. After the bridge had reopened to traffic, work would continue at the site for another couple of weeks for rock armouring and work on the footpaths, Mr Voss said.
Waitaki Mayor Gary Kircher said "a number of factors" had allowed the clean-up to progress quickly. The council’s "rural resilience project", in which $2.1 million had been spent improving road drainage since 2015, and the response from the council’s roading contractor SouthRoads and its subcontractors played a part.
"First and foremost, we’ve been lucky that it has been more coastal this time — so that’s limited the area of damage," Mr Kircher said.
"Working with our contractor to quickly get them on the job ... we ended up with these 15 different crews out and about doing assigned jobs. They’ve been able to work through things much more quickly.
"That’s something where we’ve been a little bit critical of in the past — we’ve felt that more resources needed to be thrown in right from the start to get through the work more quickly and it’s certainly happened well this time."
Council acting chief executive Neil Jorgensen said the council’s $1-million-plus price tag for the clean-up would take "a wee while to firm up", but the council had done a "reasonable job" of assessing the damage in the district.
The bridge would cost between $100,000 and $200,000 to repair, a further $140,000 damage was done to the district’s parks, including walkways at Moeraki.
He said the council was still "exploring ... different options" to pay for the clean-up. Some costs would be covered by insurance, some would come from existing budgets "and some may be able to be claimed back from the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management — we’re just working through all those different scenarios".
●Waimate Mayor Craig Rowley said the South Canterbury district had been "fortunate" not to have more serious flooding as a result of the storm. The district sustained about $400,000 in roading damage, most of which was in the Hakataramea area.
