Frustration over bridge repairs in the Maniototo is wearing thin but the Central Otago District Council (CODC) says patience is needed.

“We seem to be kicking the can up the street and we’re getting to the end of that street,” Maniototo Community Board chair Robert Hazlett said last week.

Robert Hazlett Chairman of the Maniototo Community Board

At the board’s meeting on Thursday (June 23) Robert cited an example of a bridge that had been damaged in 2017 and still not been repaired. 

Local residents had made their own repairs and truck companies were now utilising it too, despite the temporary nature of the fix.

Council says a basic picture has now emerged of the amount of work needed to repair or replace damaged bridges across Central Otago’s aging network, following two years of sporadic engineering inspections.

Individual sites now needed to be assessed in more detail, the Maniototo Community Board was told last week.  

Mayor Tim Cadogan said he understood why people were “getting grumpy” but council needed to look at the problem as a whole before deciding how to best prioritise resources.

Repair costs will far exceed what is available through local government roading budgets and extra funding would be needed by applying to Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency and possibly other sources, council was told.

CODC had now appointed a staff member to focus solely on the bridge issue, started discussions with Fulton Hogan on planning and ramped up the work to prioritise what gets fixed first, staff told the board on Thursday.

Patience needed

Maniototo residents and service providers like posties and stock firms have already been detouring and fording rivers for two years following bridge closures and with dozens more bridges operating on borrowed time, more residents will likely face the same situation.

Across the whole district there are four bridges closed, eight soon to be requiring closure or replacement, and 17 needing “priority repairs”.  

Many of Central’s 179 bridges are in the Maniototo and with the next batch of funding from Waka Kotahi not due to be issued for another two years, major works appear to be a long way off.

The CODC budgets around $250,000 annually for structural repairs but this would not go far in light of estimates given for repairs, without considerable increases in government help.  

The installation of a series of box culverts as a solution to the loss of the Scott Lane bridge after flooding in 2020 was suggested at between $650,000 and $750,000, council has been told.

Due to the dynamic nature of the riverbed which changes and carries a lot of debris during floods, a series of box culverts across its bed was seen as the best option.

Late this year or early next year more detailed repair estimates and a prioritised list was expected to be complete. In the meantime, installation of a temporary bridge at Halls Ford on the Maniototo Road was being looked into.