Old Stock Route Road

Long-delayed road sealing program gets underway

 

Recently residents of Vineyard and Oakville witnessed the welcome sight of the dirt sections of Old Stock Route Road and Brennans Dam Road being sealed. Finally!
 
These works are being funded in part from $250,000 allocation from the Commonwealth Community Infrastructure program, and topped up with Council funds resulting in a $560,000 spend. I had been agitating for this since my election in 2016.
 
There's more to do – these works don't encompass the Commercial Road approach (another $450K – I'll keep at it).
 
These works are engineered to be resilient to the periodic inundation this road suffers from. Scour protection works protect the creek, flood gates will be installed, and concrete rails will mitigate against the road edges breaking away.
 
The works were supposed to be completed by Christmas. COVID and floods delayed it, but I'm so pleased to see it finally happening!
 
I note in passing that the two Councillors who voted against this project both stood for re-election last December, and neither got back in.

 


A big win for Oakville residents

After nearly five years of banging on about the shocking state of our local roads, I was very pleased at Councils meeting of 30/3 to be able to negotiate additional funding to FINALLY SEAL Old Stock Route Road and Brennans Dam Road at Vineyard.

Most of this is new money, and was absolutely not on the table before.

Some additional commentary:

• Unfortunately this does not yet seal the Commercial Road approach.

• The culvert will have some drainage and scour works done, but will remain a single-lane crossing for now.

• I couldn't get the whole package of works through tonight, both because of our inability to complete the whole project within the deadline of the Commonwealth grant (31 Dec 2021), but also because I could not get more than this through the Chamber (for now).

• Further stages to fix Commercial + widen the culvert have been costed (~$450K) and I pledge to return to these ASAP.

• Yes, this road floods. Regularly. However, when natural disasters strike we get 100% coverage from the State Government to restore these roads but only on the basis of a 'no betterment clause', meaning we can't use disaster relief funds to improve a road beyond it's previous state. If however we improve it now, future damage will be covered to this new better standard. Some of the drainage works will help prevent road erosion against future flooding.

THANK YOU to my Hawkesbury Liberal Team Council colleagues and other Councillors who voted for this, especially those who reversed their previous opposition. Not everyone did...