Dubbed the Yeppen Floodplain upgrade, the project will ensure the two-week road closure motorists endured during the January 2011 floods does not happen again.
The upgrade will help keep the highway’s connections in and out of Rockhampton open, even in the event of heavy rain, by delivering improvements along the section between the Burnett Highway and the Yeppen roundabout.
Those improvements include two new raised northbound lanes and a 1.6km bridge.
They come on top of the upgrade of the roundabout and the construction of a new, higher bridge across the Yeppen Lagoon — which is already underway and on track to be completed this year.
Federal Infrastructure and Transport Minister Anthony Albanese said the upgrade was in line with the government’s final report of the Fitzroy River Floodplain and road planning study published yesterday.
He said the $5 million will help make the project shovel ready.
“A road can never be made 100 per cent flood proof but this planned upgrade could greatly improve flood immunity and that is why the federal Labor government is putting $5 million towards detailed planning to make it shovel ready,” Albanese said.
Federal member for Capricornia Kirsten Livermore welcomed the funding to progress the planning of the Yeppen Floodplain upgrade.
“We can't have this section of the Bruce Highway cut for that length of time again, it is devastating for the local community as well as our nation's productivity as it brings the movement of people, freight and services to a full stop,” Livermore said.
“During the January 2011 floods when the road was cut for over two weeks, I spoke to people all across the region who suffered from the Bruce Highway being cut off.
“People could not get to work, freight and supplies could not get out to our local communities and some businesses even had trouble paying their staff as they could not operate as normal.
“We need to do everything we can to minimise the impact of any future floods on our community and it is time we got this section ready for construction.”
The Fitzroy River is the second largest waterway in Australia—beaten in size only by the Murray Darling system—with a catchment of 150,000sq.km.
This article first appeared in ILN's sister publication ConstructionIndustryNews.net.
