Saturday, March 30, 2024

Partial reopening for flood-hit Shoalhaven road

Shoalhaven City Council has partially opened Wattamolla Road to motorists after more than four months of closure following the recent East Coast Low weather event.

Wattamolla Road experienced two major landslips during the deluge – 130m and 2.5km west of Woodhill Mountain Road – which critically damaged the road, cutting off access for visitors and residents to Kangaroo Valley since March.  

As an interim solution, traffic flow has been restricted to single-lane access in the impacted areas, Council said today, with two-lane traffic flow set to resume at the completion of works by the end of 2022. 

Shoalhaven City Council Mayor, Amanda Findley said Council crews have been working around the clock since the March East Coast Low to get this road repaired.  

“An incredible amount of work has gone on to get this stretch of road operational again,” Mayor Findley said.  

“Even with the heavy rainfall over the past four days, the new lane withstood 600 millimetres of rain and is on track for opening.

“The funding from the Disaster Relief Fund from the Australian Government has gone a long way to ensure this road is rebuilt to a high standard for our community. 

“Much of the work for this project has gone on out of the sight of the project site. The project team have had to produce some innovative solutions to the challenges presented by the landslip, drainage, and gradient of the damaged road asset.  

“Residents might remember that in the early days of this road repair there was hesitation to put heavy machinery even safely on the site because of the possibility of further land slipping and early remedial works were required to support the edge of the road.

“The team has spent an extensive amount of time creating design solutions to overcome the geotechnical challenges of the site including road resilience testing, bore location identification, continuous bore well water testing and the installation of a Geo-Cell solution beneath the road to underpin the weight of the road base.”  

More than $2 million has been spent repairing roads, bridges, and causeways, as well as clearing the major landslips that engulfed roads around Kangaroo Valley, the Mayor said. 

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