Minor flooding tests 2017 flood repairs

14 February 2020

Crews out assessing damage

Council crews are out and about today inspecting the damage from minor overnight flooding in the Tweed, which is testing some major repairs undertaken on our roads and bridges network after the March 2017 major flood in the wake of Ex-Tropical Cyclone Debbie.

Water ran over the new concrete two-lane bridge on Byrrill Creek Road as designed. That road is currently closed.

There have been no major landslips but a lot of smaller ones.

The South Murwillumbah Flood levee repairs are working well. The levee repair was completed and handed back to Council last Friday, prior to the heavier sustained rainfall from Saturday.

“The flood levee repair was completed in the nick of time for South Murwillumbah and, particularly, the residents of River Street,” Manager Roads and Stormwater Danny Rose said. “Without doubt it has stopped the further undermining of the river bank in those locations and saved a lot of damage to both Council and private property.”

Council has one lane closed at the intersection of Leisure and Darlington drives, Banora Point, where a large sinkhole opened up yesterday around a sewer manhole. Crews are out inspecting this damage today and may have to fully close this road until repairs can be made when the weather improves.

There have been four other sewer collapses across the shire. Crews are on site at the worst of these on private property off Environmental Drive at Pottsville. Others are on private property at Poplar and Poinciana avenues, Bogangar and Kingscliff Street, Kingscliff.

At this stage there is no risk to community health or the environment.

In Tumbulgum, there have been isolated failures of the vacuum sewerage system and crews will work through these issues as they continue to arise.

Stotts Creek Resource Recovery Centre (the tip) is closed today due to flooding of access roads. Bin services are continuing as normal today unless flood water prevents truck access. Collection trucks will return to properties that are cut off by flood water as soon as possible.

Numerous roads around the Tweed are closed due to water over the road, including Tweed Valley Way in both directions at Chinderah and at the Farmers Markets at Tumbulgum.

Motorists are advised to slow down and expect water, potholes, debris and other hazards on the roads – on all and any road. Please be patient and accept delays will happen for the next day or so.

Kyogle Road at Bray Park is still open to traffic but very rough.

“We were doing roadworks here and the rain beat us before we could get the road sealed so it’s now in pretty rough shape. Crews are out there every day doing what they can to keep the road open but we ask that motorists slow down and take extra care on this section.”

For the latest information on road closures and hazards visit the Tweed Emergency Dashboard https://emergency.tweed.nsw.gov.au (which links through to MyRoadInfo as well as a range of other useful information and links such as weather warnings, river heights and rainfall).

Downloads

Photo 1(JPG, 141KB)

Caption: Byrrill Creek Bridge under water yesterday.

Photo 2(JPG, 214KB)

Caption: Byrrill Creek Bridge today. It was the bridge's first flood test and the structure performed as designed.