Residents awaiting the completion of the Federal Drive reconstruction have highlighted the impacts of losing connections to the hinterland village two years after the 2022 floods.
Council staff confirmed with The Echo that contractors are aiming for completion at the end of April, dependent on weather.
Goonengerry resident, Melissa Begg, told The Echo, ‘The Federal/Goonengerry community and businesses have been separated now for over two years since the February 2022 floods by the landslip on Federal Drive to Goonengerry’.
‘Council took an inexplicable 12 months after the event to get the tender out for the reconstruction and repair, and we were told it would be about 12 months after that, before the road would open, and a likelihood of at least one lane open before that timeframe’.
Federal Store takings down
The assistant manager of the Federal Store told The Echo that the road closure had impacted the business considerably.
‘Takings are down 37 per cent, but to get any assistance, we would need to have been at 40 per cent,’ they said.
They agreed that many customers travel to Mullum instead because of the road closure.
Melissa says, ‘In the 2017 cyclone, we lost the same road for two years after a landslip in exactly the same place.
‘Council were told by local farmers – the elderly people up here, whose families have been here for generations, the road should not have been built through the hill in the first place, and that they should not rebuild the road there again, because there is a spring at the top of the hill’.
‘It causes massive instability, and there was an existing lower road around that the locals told them to upgrade instead as the proper access between the villages’.
She said Council ignored locals, and ‘built the current road configuration and decommissioned that former road’.
Council’s media spokesperson replied, ‘In relation to the geotechnical investigation, the damage to the roadway from the 2022 event was far more extensive than from the 2017 event, and while the 2017 event repairs remained relatively intact within the larger 2022 failure, their demolition was required to undertake stabilisation and reconstruction of the 2022 event damage’.
‘Part of the repair solution for the 2022 event damage involves tapping the spring, and providing drainage relief structures to avoid damage from the spring in future.
Lower road unsupported
‘Geotechnical inspections and advice did not support the opening up of the lower road, as this still would have involved subsurface drainage works and landslip stabilisation of the lower road, in addition to those currently being undertaken on Federal Drive.
‘We appreciate residents and businesses’ patience, while the work has been undertaken. As you can appreciate this is an extremely complex job’.
Melissa added, ‘Families trying to get their kids to the local schools and daycare, etc. in Goonengerry and Federal are also massively affected, and the total loss of community social cohesion is very demoralising over such a long period’.
I wonder if the lower road would have been cheaper and quicker to fix … which wouldn’t have benefited the construction company. Are tenders all above board at Byron Council?