Council’s Road Corridor Bushfire Clean-up Continues

Published on 18 February 2021

More than 8,000 loads of fire impacted debris and timber has been removed from Road Corridors across the Snowy Valleys as part of Council’s Bushfire Cleanup efforts.

“Last Summer’s bushfires impacted a huge 350km of local and regional roads, and post fires road corridor clean-up was the single largest issue residents flagged with Council,” said Snowy Valleys Council CEO Matthew Hyde.

Directly following the fires Council teams undertook significant works to clear and make safe dangerous fire impacted trees and vegetation ensuring local roads were safe to drive on again.

Mr Hyde said Council were then able to secure funding via the Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements to broaden the scope of the road corridor clean-up.

“To date we have expended approximately $4.5million on the roadside clean-up project and we will expend approximately $1million on chipping and haulage of the debris,” he said.

“An estimated 200,000 cubic metres of green waste has been produced from the clean-up which we are now in the process of chipping for hauling and processing into mulch.

“On advice from Arborists, safe habitat trees have been maintained to support endemic wildlife species and where possible materials have been removed to reduce the future fire risk,” said Mr Hyde.

“We are now seeing species of native plants grow back that have not been seen for many years so it’s important to try and protect these as best we can”.

The Black Summer Bushfires affected over sixty percent of the Snowy Valleys region and Council’s clean-up crews have removed fire impacted debris and timber from road corridors including Elliot Way, Mundaroo Ournie Road, Old Tumbarumba Road, Courabyra Road and Tooma Road.

“We continue to advocate for further Government funding to assist in the rejuvenation of our road reserves and impacted public lands and we thank the State and Federal Government for their support so far, said Mr Hyde.

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