Representatives from Waka Kotahi, Marlborough Roads Recovery Team and Marlborough District Council met with members of the Kenepuru community at Waitaria Bay hall and The Portage Hotel late last week.

Deputy Mayor Nadine Taylor, who chairs the Council’s Assets and Services Committee, opened proceedings, and welcomed the participants.

“It was great to see so many turn out. Community feedback is really important for us to inform our programme. We recently made a number of changes to our planned closures as a result of the recent meeting with the farming community here,” she said.

She also thanked the local community.

“Everyone has had a challenging couple of years due to the Covid pandemic. To have your roading network severely damaged on top of that made things extremely difficult for everyone in the Kenepuru and in other areas of Marlborough, notably the Awatere Valley.”

Emma Speight, Director of Regional Relationships for Waka Kotahi, acknowledged the collaboration with Council and the community’s patience on top of the economic and personal cost they were bearing.

“The network is still fragile, so it is important we get these designs and repairs right. Climate change and the increased intensity of storms is something we now have to factor into all our work and planning.”

“This is the second largest local roads recovery project undertaken in New Zealand, surpassed only by the Christchurch earthquakes’ recovery.”

“I’m pleased to say the Government through Waka Kotahi will fund 95 per cent of the cost of this recovery, which is approximately $81M of the $85.3M total cost. I know this will come as a relief to the Mayor and Councillors and also the wider Marlborough community.”

She said the usual financial assistance rate (FAR) for large roading recovery projects was 71 per cent.

“Our funding commitment follows an earlier pledge by Waka Kotahi to fund 95 per cent of the immediate response phase of repairs after the July 2021 storm, which was estimated last October to be $21.7M, and this is included in the $81M.”

Andrew James, Systems Manager from Waka Kotahi, and Steve Murrin, Marlborough Roads Recovery Manager, explained some of the planned construction timeframes expected over the coming months.

“There has been some great progress made so far with more than 1,000 of the 1,600-plus faults completed,” Mr Murrin said.

He said they had identified four critical sites on Kenepuru Road with only one currently needing a hard closure.

“We’ve tried to minimise the need for hard closures, where we close the road over consecutive days with no lunchtime or evening openings.”

“Currently the only site identified as requiring a hard closure is Water Tank Slip at RP 20.5, just over 1km after Te Mahia Road turnoff.”

In Mr Murrin’s presentation the Water Tank Slip was programmed for after Easter, so that there were no hard closures during the area’s busy season.

The three other complex sites, RP 12.8 500m before Mahau Road, the Torea underslip and Portage Heights, have been programmed to occur one after another from late June to early December.

Feedback was sought from the community on changing the order of the complex sites and moving the Water Tank Slip to before Christmas.

The Marlborough Roads recovery works are all programmed to be completed by June 2023.

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