Woman fears ‘unavoidable potholes’ could cause a crash
A stoush over potholes on a no exit unsealed road is brewing, with a resident saying the council doesn’t maintain the road and the surface is dangerous.
But the council says it has received several complaints about the effects on the road from activities by some property owners along the road, and it assessed the condition of it this week.
SallyAnn Copland lives on Rosemarkie Rd, an unsealed rural road at Waikana in the Gore district.
“Our road has been atrocious. The potholes are so big I worry about breaking an axle in the car. It’s dangerous, and you really get sick of having to navigate round the holes because some of them are quite deep,’’ she said.
“There are so many of them you can’t avoid them. We had friends here at the weekend and they all talked about how bad the condition of the road was - one said it was the worst they had ever seen’’.
Copland said she had previously complained to the council’s roading manager, Murray Hasler, about the road.
“They came out and filled half the potholes, so I had to ring him again and ask them to finish the job,’’ she said.
The road would not be improved by grading it because at this time of the year it ‘’turned to mush’’ before winter, she said.
Her husband Mark, who had complained to two Gore district councillors about the potholes, questioned whether the council put any value on rural roads.
“This road brings stock and milk out to the market, which is the backbone of the country,” he said..
“Farming is the only thing keeping the country going at the moment.”
Hasler said Rosemarkie Rd was due to be graded along with several other roads in this area.
“We cannot grade these roads in the current weather because they will become slushy so they will be graded as soon as conditions are dry enough to do so,” Hasler said.
“Unfortunately, the resident on this road who has reported this issue to the news media did not report it to the council to have remedial action taken.
“It does, however, appear from the comments from the resident that our contractor has noted the problem during their inspections and has taken some interim action to improve the road for travellers until the grader is able to grade the road.
“If necessary, temporary warning signs will be erected until the grader is able to take action.”
Although Rosemarkie Rd is a no exit road with very low traffic volume, the council did its best to keep it in a safe trafficable condition and respond to service requests from the public as quickly as it could.
“As we have limited resources available we do have to prioritise our response to the most serious issues first which can delay the response on lesser priority issues.
“We have recently arranged for our contractor to bring a second grader onto the network to improve our response to these issues at peak times. The council also had our contractor re-metal Rosemarkie Rd in November 2023,’’ Hasler said.
A check of the council customer service database indicated that it had only received one official complaint about grading on this road during the past year.
“There have also been several complaints about the effects on the road from activities by some property owners along the road during that period.”