The West Coast Regional Council says it is working with urgency to address potential rockfall risk from a disused quarry near Blackball.
An aerial view of the cleared slip marked in yellow below the Kiwi quarry access road. Photo: LDR / West Coast Regional Council
The matter came up last month after a professional assessment of the council's quarry operations.
Potential risk to the public was flagged at disused sites at both Blackball and Kiwi Point.
The Blackball-Croesus Road runs below the old Blackball quarry, and was widened in 2019-20 by the Grey District Council to access the new Paparoa Track.
Regional council chief executive Heather Mabin said they had been talking to both the Grey District Council and the Department of Conservation as an affected party.
"DOC requested that the access road or the public road below the GDC land be changed and they are open to being involved in those discussions," Mabin said.
"That is all moving forward and I have signalled a sense of urgency given that there is a potential risk to people travelling along that particular road."
The Blackball site had been given higher priority, she said.
The council was told last month the disused Blackball site was a potential risk to the recently widened road, "with rock looking to exit on to the road".
Consultant Keri Harrison said the Blackball quarry access had been compromised by the road widening and loose material posed a potential fall risk.
Ideally the site would be closed permanently but mitigating the risk at the site had to be undertaken to meet new legal requirements for quarry operators, she said.
Grey District Council operations manager Aaron Haymes said today he had yet to visit the site but expected to do so with the road engineer early next week.
He believed the risk being posed was around the cut-off access to the old quarry rather than the road.
"I would be absolutely stunned that we've done a road and the (quarry) access has been left as it is," Haymes said.
Making one road safer and another less so was obviously not a desirable outcome, he said.
The council would rely on the professional geotechnical assessment to manage the situation, noting the size of the potential rockfall material and the distance of the quarry face from the road was a consideration.
"We want to make sure an engineer with the right credentials is giving use advice on how safe it is initially."
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