The Northern Rivers Times Edition 131

DRIVERS HEADING OFF ROAD TO MISS POTHOLES

By TIM HOWARD

Users of a vital rural road accessing Clarence Valley farming communities say the the road surface has become so bad drivers drive on the grass verge rather than use what remains of the bitumen surface.

Lower Coldstream Rd resident Ken Cowan described the state of the road as “post-pothole”.

‘It’s a disgrace,” he said. “Since the foods nearly a year ago the council has done nothing to repair the road.

Mr Cowan, who is also a relief school bus driver on the road, said the February/March food last year did a lot of damage, but the surface had deteriorated since then.

“It’s like a jigsaw puzzle,” he said. “And every time a car, truck or bus goes over it more pieces come loose.

Mr Cowan said there was more than 2m of foodwater over the road in the last food and when it receded the road was badly damaged, but usable.

“There were potholes, but they weren’t too big and there were sections of the road that were not too badly damaged,” he said. “If they could have patched them up early on, they could have avoided what’s happening now.”

Mr Cowan said the council had not “seemed interested” in the state of the road.

“I called them to see when they might send someone out and they took my details.

“But when I asked if someone could give me a call back, the said: ‘council does not do callbacks’.”

He said residents who

Calliope resident Ken Cowan shows the depth of a pothole in Lower Coldstream Rd that has developed in front of his driveway since last year’s foods.

used the road, which winds from Calliope, along the western bank of the Coldstream River and emerges on the Big River Way between Cowper and Tyndale, fear for their safety and other road users.

“As a bus driver, I’m worried when I get too far off the road to avoid some bad sections of road, the bus could slide down an embankment into a drain.

“If I go through a pothole I can feel the bus lurch down and the skid plate hits side of the

‘Like a jigsaw’. Calliope resident Ken Cowan’s description of how the road surface of Lower Coldstream Rd has broken up since the foods last year.

pothole.

“For smaller vehicles, like our little Mazda, it really knocks them about.”

He said the road was regularly used by trucks up to semi-trailer size servicing the many farms and villages in the area/

In October Mr Cowan contacted Ulmarra-based

councillor Steve Pickering to discuss the state of the road.

“The councillor was surprised at the lack of repairs when he heard the road was a bus route,” he said.

“He told me school bus routes were had priority when it came to road repairs.”

But Mr Cowan said there had not been any work done on the road since the food.

“Even the council staff know what should be happening,” he said.

“A couple of weeks ago a truck turned up with some digging equipment and I thought ‘at last they’ve come to fx the roads’.

“But they’d only come to clear a drain, which is practically meaningless out here now.

“When I talked to one of the workers he said they

should have been fxing the roads and not the working on a drain.”

Cr Pickering said he was disappointed Lower Coldstream Rd had not been repaired.

“As a school bus route, it’s supposed to be a priority road for repairs,” he said.

“I referred my conversation with Mr Cowan on October 30 to the director works and civil, Jamie Fleeting.

“I will speak to him about Mr Cowan’s issues and the state of the road.”

He said road repair has

been a massive issue for the council since the foods.

“We saw from the recently released fndings of the council’s customer satisfaction survey that roads were the number one issue for ratepayers,” he said.

“In the past week the State Government has announced a $500 million food repair program,” Cr Pickering said.

“I understand we will get about $4 million of that to spend on our roads.”

He said the council has 20 private contractors

on the books doing road works.”

He acknowledged the road repair issue was enormous across the state and a massive issue for the many councils dealing with road repairs after wide spread fooding in the past two years.

Mr Cowan was also aware of the scale of road repairs for the council.

“I understand that they have a lot on their plate,” he said. “But if they had just been able to do a little bit straight away it might have made a difference.

“And when you ask them to keep in contact and they say ‘we don’t do callbacks’, it just makes you shake your head.”

An audit has shown there were 3378 road and stormwater defects across the 10,000 square kilometre Clarence Valley region after the foods last year.

The audit showed the Clarence Valley road network consisted of 1041 sealed roads more than 1136km in length plus an unsealed road network of 441 roads more than 1270km in length.

“The extreme weather events – which have been the highest rainfall since records began – have had a serious impact on our roads,” Mr Fleeting said in a council press release from April last year.

“Repairing these defects is a major undertaking and we ask that the community please be patient while our road crews and operational staff continue the task of fxing the damage.

“We anticipate it could take at least 12 months to restore the road network and we have had to bring in external contractors to help us get the job done.”