Narrabri Shire roads greatly impacted by ongoing flooding

Narrabri Shire has been greatly impacted by ongoing flooding events across the region as a result of an extended La Nina weather pattern.

As such, widespread and extensive damage has been caused to the roads network across the shire.

While the road services team are still assessing the full extent of the damage, over 985 defects have been recorded in the past three months alone.

These damages range from significant gravel and road loss to potholes.

The Narrabri Shire road network stretches some 2343km, and as of November 15, 2022, defects span at least 1995kms of those.

Flooding and rain events since February 2020 have caused more than $20 million of damage to Narrabri’s roads, with the total damage bill for September-November 2022 expecting to eclipse $6 million and taking over two years to complete.

While Disaster Recovery Funding from the NSW government is greatly beneficial, the process is timely, convoluted and directly managed by Transport for NSW with council still waiting on approval for March and November 2021 events.

To put the scale of this into perspective, shire roads are allocated $2.9 million in maintenance activities for the year, with the reconstruction of a road costing approximately $1million/kilometre and $50,000/kilometre to re-sheet a road pending location and soil type.

Council’s road services team have been working tirelessly to address the damage to our roads network.

In normal weather conditions, council has sufficient resources to address damages and defect requests in a relatively short timeframe.

However, due to the current scale of damages, this is no longer the case.

Priorities are constantly evolving as road conditions change, however, council’s prioritisation methodology has consistently been that larger damages on higher trafficked roads and roads with serious safety concerns have the highest priority.

If a damaged road is not being repaired, it is only because staff are working on higher-priority damages.

Council is currently reviewing the Roads Hierarchy, which will be presented to the community early next year.

These problems are not unique to Narrabri Shire Council, with similar damages occurring in all local government areas across the state.

This continues to create huge demand for contractors and skilled staff, with councils across the state competing for expanded crews, contractors and hired plant.

We understand the concerns of our residents and thank you for your patience and understanding during these unprecedented times.

Council will continue to update the community on their road service operations and will share further information once available.