Central Coast Council will investigate funding opportunities through the State Government to help in its flood recovery efforts.
Minister for Regional Transport and Roads, Sam Farraway, this week announced that councils hardest hit by the floods would receive a total of $46M in fast-tracked emergency funding to kick start urgent road repairs and restore access to communities across the north coast.
“Council will continue to assess opportunities to secure funding that assists with recovery efforts,” a spokesperson said.
“This includes our eligibility to access the existing approved NSW Disaster Declaration funding to be used to repair damaged essential public infrastructure.”
Farraway said flooding had caused millions of dollars of damage, including destroyed road surfaces, wrecked signage, landslips across roads, and damaged bridges and culverts.
“Our communities have been through a challenging couple of weeks, so we want to ensure councils have access to the cash they need to get work underway right now,” he said.
“The funding builds on the new specialised unit tasked with the repair of vital regional road and rail infrastructure damaged and destroyed by these floods
“Councils will have direct access to this specialised, dedicated unit within Transport for NSW, which will provide expertise and extra resources to quickly assess the damage, fix it and continue to improve and make our roads and rail network more disaster resistant.”
Minister for Emergency Services and Resilience and Minister for Flood Recovery, Steph Cooke, said fixing roads is an important early task in the recovery process.
“Getting this funding in the hands of councils means work can begin as quickly as possible on the local roads most in need of repair,” Cooke said.
Minister for Local Government, Wendy Tuckerman, said the direct support for severely affected councils was essential to rebuilding and repairing critical infrastructure and support future recovery works.
While the funding will initially be made available to councils in Ballina Shire, Bellingen Shire, Byron Shire, Clarence Valley, Glen Innes Severn Shire, Kyogle, Lismore, Richmond Valley, Tenterfield and Tweed Shire, additional councils may be eligible to receive advance funding and will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
Terry Collins