Moorabool Shire sets aside extra $600,000 for flood-damaged roads

Moorabool was among the worst-affected councils in the area during the October-November floods, with the Yarrowee River completely swallowing the Kellys Road bridge between Elaine and Grenville.

Parts of Ballan, Blackwood and Darley were also inundated.

"Recently we increased our maintenance budget by $600,000 so we can move to fix our roads as quickly as possible," Cr Ward said.

"This additional maintenance spending is on top of the $11.7 million allocated in Council's current budget to improve roads, bridges, footpaths and drainage in the shire.

"We also have an additional $500,000 in flood recovery funding from the state government - a total of $12.8 million to be spent on roads."

Another $1.1 million was announced on Monday for 50 individual repairs along Geelong-Ballan Road - a defacto highway between the Geelong and Bendigo regions which comes under VicRoads' jurisdiction.

Cr Ward said Moorabool's regular road maintenance crews were about a month behind schedule when the last of the floods hit - but extreme heat had now put them even further behind.

"Every local government area - and even the state government - is in the same boat," he said.

"But we're confident of catching up."

He said existing road maintenance staff had been doing "significant" overtime, extra staff had been re-assigned to the unit and council had leased more road-making equipment.

"The efforts of our outdoor staff ve been extraordinary - and I know they were devastated when some of those storms hit, washing away their previous work," the mayor said.

"Now the weather's improved, we are pushing ahead.

"While we've invested a significant amount in this, we're also actively lobbying the state government to allocate more funds to allow us to accelerate our roads program even further."

Cr Ward checked out edge cracks, rutting and potholes on the Yendon-Egerton Road on Friday - and encouraged drivers to report shoddy roads.

"I drove from Gordon to Meredith recently and I could see the road needed repair, so I put in my own maintenance request to Council," he said.

"We want to encourage residents to let us know if there is an issue with their roads.

"We have 1700 kilometres of road network to take care of - and our staff are not in every area, every day.

"The more a problem road is logged, the quicker it should get repaired."

The shire's website has a regularly-reviewed list of priority roadworks.

Upcoming works in the west of the shire include:

Cr Ward is a former head of the Ballarat Football League, AFL Goldfields and Ballarat Greyhound Racing Club.

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