At the 2017 Auststab Awards of Excellence, council took out the award for Excellence in Recycling in Stabilised Pavements in Local Government.

The award reflects council’s commitment to improving work practices and ensuring the efficient and effective use of ratepayer’s money to improve our road network, said acting infrastructure director, Andrew Doig

The award application focused on road improvements completed on Lord St and Kennedy Drive in 2016. The project involved a range of innovative road practices, including removing and recycling the existing road surface for use on other unsealed roads.

Old practices would see this material sent to land fill as contaminated waste, which would cost the community not only in financial terms, (approximately $450,000 if it occurred in this project) but also fill up valuable land fill space.

The works were funded by the special rate variation, which has allowed council to focus on proactive maintenance and renewal of our road network to increase safety for vehicles and pedestrians.

“Council will invest more than $35 million in road and transport infrastructure, maintenance and upgrades during the 2017/2018 financial year,” Mr Doig said.

“Investment in our sealed and unsealed road network will be a key part of this, and it’s great for council to be recognised for the innovative, cost effective and efficient ways we’re improving local roads.”

Council manages nearly 900km of sealed and 465km of unsealed roads within the Port Macquarie-Hastings regions and is currently undertaking road maintenance improvements on Ocean Drive in Bonny Hills and has recently completed works on King Creek Road, Sarah’s Crescent and Stoney Creek Road in Wauchope.

AustStab is the only member driven industry association in the world for pavement recycling and stabilisation – roads for future generations.

Established in 1995, the group provide education and work collaboratively with industry partners to encourage technical research and development.