Blue Mountains City Council is implementing road recovery strategies and continues to urgently fix potholes across the City, after two years of unprecedented wet weather and major flooding events in March and July this year.
Council has created a dedicated portal on its website about potholes – including an outline of Council’s Infrastructure Recovery Plan, the current ongoing challenges due to widespread saturated roads and winter weather hindering progress, as well as information on pothole and road defect claims.
Go to bmcc.nsw.gov.au/major-projects/potholes for more information.
Mayor Cr Mark Greenhill said: “Council staff are doing everything they can to address the widespread damage and ongoing issue of potholes, and we are delivering an escalated works program throughout the Blue Mountains.
“We have had four major flooding events in three years (2020, 2021 and 2022) and, due to a La Nina, two years of unprecedented wet weather. This has damaged more than a third of the road network in the Blue Mountains.
“I know our community is frustrated by the state of the roads, but there is no quick fix. All Council can do is continue to painstakingly triage all required repairs that are reported and continue to fix these – which is a mammoth task – with increased resources.
“This is the case all over NSW where there has been extensive damage to road networks on top of supply issues. We are all battling to secure extra funding too.”
In June 2022 Council commenced a $250,000 emergency heavy patching program and following July’s natural disaster, council re-evaluated this emergency program of works and is now implementing a $3 million emergency heavy patching program (funded by the NSW Government).
Council has allocated almost $12.5 million to roads and retaining structures in 2022/23.
“We currently have three crews working simultaneously throughout the City, dealing with the more than 1200 potholes that have been reported,” Mayor Greenhill said. “In addition we have crews working on weekends. We are also dealing with 60 landslip sites.
“Our customer service team is taking a high volume of calls to deal with the many ongoing impacts of recent natural disasters, so I urge residents to help us with this process by reporting any potholes on local roads at the online portal here: bmcc.nsw.gov.au/report-a-pothole.
“We urge drivers to always keep a look out for potholes in the current climate and drive in accordance with the conditions.
“In conditions like what we’ve been experiencing, with incredible amounts of rain hitting our roads, we sometimes have to take temporary measures to fix unsafe potholes. Once weather conditions improve, crews are able to return and complete repair work at a later date.”
Council also reminds residents that they can access the emergency dashboard for emergency services: https://emergency.bmcc.nsw.gov.au/. This includes updates from emergency services, latest news, and local road closures, as well as helpful recovery information.
For more information on potholes go to: bmcc.nsw.gov.au/major-projects/potholes
Photo: Mayor Mark Greenhill visiting one of the sites where road repairs are occurring.
