La Nina continues to slow progress on Kempsey Shire Council flood repair work

Estimates are ongoing, but the council's manager for infrastructure delivery Dylan Reeves said the total damage repair bill would come close to $35 million with 42 landslips identified as needing repair.

"Obviously, since March 2021, there's been significant expenditure in terms of investment for emergency-related works, but we've got longer-term works as well," Mr Reeves said.

"Because of the magnitude of the costs and the damage repair work required, we would have only completed about 10 per cent.

"All of the damage which hindered peoples movement or caused the failure of an asset has been fixed, but the longer-term slip repairs have not been done."

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Kempsey Shire has spent $2.1 million on emergency works for local and regional roads.

"This work has included costs associated with the immediate emergency response and work completed to enable access, Mr Reeves said.

"Some key aspects of this work have included cleaning slips to enable access, closing roads, cleaning flood debris and repairing roads such as Crescent Head Road at the Corduroy."

Mr Reeve said council had prioritised the 42 landslips and placed Devils Nook at the top of the list.

"We are commencing work at Devil's Nook in the near future; however, the contractor is currently working on emergency works from damage sustained during the recent flood events," Mr Reeves said.

"Council will progressively work through each slip until all are repaired and made safe for the long term."

Read more: March 2021 flood devastation seen from the air

The Devil's Nook Slip repair will cost $3.8 million, Mr Reeves said, with estimates still being refined and funding applications being lodged with Transport for NSW and NSW Public Works for assessment in a progressive fashion.

Not all funding is guaranteed at this point, and the costs to the council will be the most significant for more than a decade.

"This is a large quantity of work from an administrative, engineering and on the ground delivery perspective and will take time to complete," Mr Reeves said.

"The bushfires in 2019 had a significant financial impact and needed a large amount of investment to recover, but the March 2021 flood event will probably wind up being costlier for the council to repair its assets."

The lessons learned last March were brought into play earlier in the month when heavy rainfall battered the region. Luckily an emergency was avoided, but Mr Reeves said a preparedness plan was ready.

And one silver lining is that the repair work is injecting money into the region, although the wet weather has hindered progress.

"We have put on more employees at the council but also there's a large number of specialist contractors and consultants that are getting a large amount of local work," Mr Reeves said.

"It is certainly bringing a large amount of money to the region, which is a valuable thing.

"It's just been a challenging year from a weather perspective for construction and maintenance.

"We're lucky because we've got a very committed team who get stuck in and try to catch up as quickly as possible.

So we've got things at the moment in place where we're not too bad, but that lingering rain certainly has a massive impact.

"We've got more rain forecast for the next five days, and that just puts our program behind where we had ideally hoped to be."

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