Karamea Highway repairs strengthen vital transport link

The Karamea Highway suffered significant damage during the July 2021 and February 2022 weather events.  

In December 2022, council received $13.2M funding approval from Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency for the repair of the Buller District’s storm damaged roads. 

Contractors are hard at work tackling a number of roading repairs on the damaged Karamea Highway. 

A total of 29 individual projects grouped into six bundles of work are required to be completed to get the highway back to pre-July 2021 and February 2022 conditions. Four out of these six bundles have been awarded to contractors to date. 

Twelve of the 29 projects are either already completed or underway, with a combined team of 12 construction staff working on these sites, from four different construction companies.  

In September and early October, significant road stabilisation and culvert replacement repairs, requiring road closures, were undertaken on the Karamea side of the bluff between Corbyvale and the Seven Sisters. 

This included a drilling operation followed by the installation of 41 soil nails overlaid with steel mesh and shotcrete. The second stage of this work during the road closures involved excavation of the full width of the road to remove a damaged culvert and replacing it with a new, larger diameter one.  

Repairs of the Karamea Highway have a forecast construction budget of $4.3 million, with $1.4 million spent to date. 

Works have recently commenced in the Karamea Basin and at Little Wanganui, which primarily consists of rock placement, removal of slip material and clearing of vegetation. 

The repairs on the Karamea Highway are part of an extensive externally funded and council managed programme. 

-ENDS- 

For further information please contact: 
Eric de Boer 
Manager Infrastructure Delivery 
[email protected]