Almost one year after the April super storm, and nearly $2 million later, Maitland City Council is approaching the end of repair work on the region’s roads that were needed as a result of the natural disaster.
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Work on the final stage of a culvert on Tocal Road has begun, with the major project expected to be finished by April, if wet weather doesn’t delay progress.
Repair of the culvert is the largest and most expensive job of the $1.8 million worth of work council has had to do as a result of the storm, at a cost of about $600,000.
It’s the final major job left from the disaster on council’s list of road repairs.
The storm caused widespread damage to infrastructure across the Maitland and Dungog area.
While another major storm last month delayed repairs to Maitland’s roads, it did not damage them or cause more setbacks.
Council infrastructure projects and building services manager Graeme Matthews said the bottom of the culvert was about three metres under water when crews were due to begin work in January.
“The culvert was fairly severely cracked on one end,” he said.
“It’s a large culvert. It’s five-and-a-half metres from bottom to top with very thick concrete walls.
“At the moment they’re in the final stages of demolition of the cracked section of the culvert. Then they’ll form up, insert all of the steel work and essentially rebuild the end of the culvert and put the road back on top.
“It all sounds very simple, but it’s a bit harder than that.”
The final stage of repairs to East Maitland Community Centre has also begun, with work expected to be finished by the end of this month.
“That’s the last of our building work,” Mr Matthews said.
“We’ve still got other minor road work to do. East Maitland Community Centre was the biggest of our building jobs.
“It was somewhere around $160,000 to repair that.”
