Thirteen days of rain and flooding last February left the Noosa community with a $44.75 million repair bill that will be fully funded by state and federal governments, administered by the Queensland Reconstruction Authority (QRA) with a deadline to complete projects by mid-2024, a Noosa Council report revealed this week.
The flood recovery report delivered to Noosa Council’s general meeting on Monday provided an update on progress.
Infrastructure services department director Larry Sengstock told the meeting council staff had been working with QRA to work out the amount of work required and funding available.
At the time of the event, about $200,000 had been spent on disaster preparation such as setting up evacuation sites, preparing sandbags and clean ups and about $300,000 went to emergency works focused on roads, footpaths and walkways immediately after.
The remainder of the work is more technically difficult, resource intensive and costly, Mr Sengstock said, with the most significant issue being a major landslide, 15m deep and still moving, on Black Mountain Road, expected to cost about $25 million to fix.
Mr Sengstock said the weather event caused 10 other major landslips, expected to be rectified with $3.62 million and 18 smaller ones costed at about $2.33 million
In addition, $6 million has been budgeted to repair damage to a roadway over a waterway requiring complex water pipe infrastructure at Schreibers Road, Cooran, $1 million has been allocated to reconstruct a section of Golden Gully Road, Kin Kin, over a waterway, and $2.14 million will go to repair 75 damaged roads.
In addition, further grants obtained by council include a clean up grant that is expected to cover clean up costs including the removal of pontoons and polystyrene that washed up on eastern beaches. A community and recreation grant of $4.6 million will be used to reconstruct Trail 4 on Black Pinch Road, Boreen Point, and a $500,000 community development grant has been obtained to employ a community recovery and resilience officer.
“It’s a massive piece of work. There’s a lot to be done and as we’ve seen over the weekend there’s always more activity and more events,“ Mr Sengstock said.
He said council was ready to go out to tender on the Black Mountain Road landslip project as well as a number of other projects.
A meeting scheduled for the weekend to update Black Mountain residents on progress was cancelled due to wet conditions.
Mr Sengstock said council had been working through five alternate concepts to fix the landslip.
“We can’t build a track on top of the landslip – it’s too dangerous,“ he said. Until tenders are in council can’t be sure of the work required and the costs but QRA were aware of the issue and had agreed to fund its reconstruction, he said. “It’s a matter of getting a detailed design, getting in there after the wet season and expedite it,“ he said.
Cr Brian Stockwell said the most important thing for council to do was to mitigate climate impacts and adapt.
Mr Sengstock said climate impacts such as predicted increased water levels were factored into everything they did but it was difficult. We have to be cautious, we don’t want to ignore it and have to deal with it later, but it all comes at a higher cost, he said.
