City diverts road resources to flood repairs

THE City of Greater Geelong has put its usual management of roads across the municipality on hold until next year as it begins cleaning up after the damaging floods that began earlier this month.

Several days of heavy rain nearly two weeks ago resulted in severe flooding along the region’s waterways and in isolated areas of the urban stormwater network, as well as inundation of infrastructure.

A storm on Friday last week and rain over the weekend saw the Barwon River rise again to at least 2.94 metres and caused minor flooding, but the impact was not as bad as during the peak of 3.86 metres on October 15.

The city is prioritising the repair of a large number of flood-damaged roads, footpaths and shared paths.

As of Friday last week, there were nearly 500 outstanding requests to fix drainage assets and 300 requests for potholes created by the flooding, with an average of 10 new porthole requests coming in each day.

The city has since received 135 after-hours call outs related to Friday night’s storm.

Inspectors are reviewing bridges and waterway channels before restarting proactive road inspections, which is expected to result in a significant increase in work.

There are several assets that are under water or inaccessible for inspection that will require considerable restoration.

Many footpaths require scraping and cleaning of mud and debris, but resources are being diverted to higher priority clean up works.

The city’s Road Management Plan (RMP) sets the standards for inspection, maintenance and repair of sealed and unsealed roads, footpaths, shared paths, kerb and channel, bridges, waterway channels and traffic control devices, but the city announced on Monday this week it had suspended the RMP for three months “given the breadth of damage and the diversion of resources”.

Acting chief executive officer Kaarina Phyland said the RMP allowed for temporary suspensions during natural disasters and other events out of its control.

“Greater Geelong experienced 50-70mm of rain across the Barwon, Moorabool and Leigh river catchments between October 12-15, causing widespread damage.

“Other Victorian councils, such as the City of Greater Bendigo, Mitchell Shire and Golden Plains Shire, have also enacted this special clause to suspend their RMPs in light of the recent flood damage.”

“The team has been working incredibly hard to ensure community safety following these rain events.”

“The city will continue to make every effort to comply with the RMP, but expects to be challenged by the set timeframes given the situation.”

A plan is being developed to manage outstanding requests for service and to reactivate the RMP.

The city reopened its sandbag collection point at St Albans Reserve in Thomson on Tuesday and Wednesday this week.

For the latest updates on flooding across the City of Greater Geelong, head to geelong.link/Flooding