New tourist route being upgraded
DESIGN work for an upgrade of Tenby St in Moeraki is under way.
Waitaki District Council roading manager Michael Voss said the project was scheduled to go out to tender in September.
He could not say at this stage when the work would be completed and did not have the initial budgeted amount for the work at hand.
Last winter, the council decided to focus on Tenby St as Haven St, Moeraki’s main street, which runs roughly parallel to Tenby St along the northern coast of the Moeraki peninsula, continued to slump into the sea despite council and community efforts to stabilise the slipprone road.
The council planned to keep Haven St open and was ‘‘still undertaking remedial works as and when required’’, Mr Voss said, but Tenby St was an important route for tourists visiting Moeraki.
‘‘We are making a number of safety improvements to the road, which will include widening, removing some pinch points and improving the intersection with Lighthouse Rd,’’ Mr Voss said. ‘‘It’s basically because there are a lot of tourists using that top road to get down to the kaik settlement, to the lighthouse and to the lookout.
‘‘It’s an important route . . . it’s got points of interest off that particular road.’’
In a report to the council’s assets committee last year, which prompted a quip by Cr Jim Hopkins at the time it showed ‘‘Haven St is abandoning us’’, Mr Voss wrote the ‘‘frequency and scale of slippages at Haven St are increasing despite the expenditure and stabilising methods, by both community and council’’.
In 2009, following a petition, the council committed $630,000 to stabilise Haven St.
However, just two years later Waihemo Community Board member Jack Lyford described the road as ‘‘an absolutely shocking mess’’.
In 2013, the street was closed after a slip and in 2015 a partnership was formed between community members and the community rebuilt the road.
The road reopened in 2016, but Haven St had reverted to its 2013 condition after severe slips, Waihemo ward councillor Jan Wheeler said last year when Haven St was reduced to one lane.