Kilometres upon kilometres of roads across New South Wales left scarred by recent catastrophic flooding has the latest estimate for local councils sitting at $1.3 billion.
Regional Roads Minister Sam Farraway said the figures from Resilience NSW showed the damage to state-owned roads was an additional $150 million.
He said crews had already repaired more than 24,000 potholes on state roads.
But he said the repair work had a long way to go.
The minister said most of the "like for like" road replacement would be covered by council applications to the federal government's Natural Disaster Declarations.
An additional jointly funded state and federal package of $312 million had also been provided to the Northern Rivers region for infrastructure resilience and improvement.
"We are going to have to work with local government to rebuild some roads that need re-alignment or to acquire land, or we might need to take into account instability with landslips," Mr Farraway said.
The state opposition's regional roads spokeswoman, Jenny Aitchison, said councils were concerned they would be left out of pocket.
"Certainly, we are hearing throughout the state they are worried the repairs will take a huge amount of their budgets," she said.
Existing 'poor' conditions
The damage caused by storm and flood events in March came after the release of a report that found 77 per cent of state-managed roads had exceeded the typical minimum design life of 20 years.
The Regional and Outer Metropolitan Asset and Service Plan 2021–2022 to 2030–2031 — marked sensitive — was obtained by the opposition in a call for papers in the state's Upper House.
The document said, "Major highways are typically designed for a 40-year pavement life, while minor road pavements generally have a 20-year design life".
It found around 2,000km or 11.7 per cent of state roads were rated as "poor" or "very poor".
It also said road deaths would be a result.
"[The] 2056 target of zero fatalities and serious trauma is at risk of not being met without significant infrastructure investment to reduce the safety risk and support the adoption of new technology such as connected and autonomous vehicles," the plan said.
Mr Farraway said the latest damage would not require the government to push out its timeline, but Ms Aitchison said the target was already at risk from funding shortfalls.
"Now we have passed all these flood events, which have wreaked havoc on those roads, and we know when a road is already damaged to put it under flood or storm event just massively increases the problem," Ms Aitchison said.
Questions about funding programs
Ms Aitchison said the government also needed to explain why it had failed to meet its promises under its road reclassification program.
"In 2019 the government announced plans to reclassify 15,000 kilometres of local roads to help councils and transfer them to state government management — now in 2022 $250 million has been spent and only 400 kilometres has been transferred," she said.
Mr Farraway said it was an extensive process to work through with additional applications being actively reviewed and he would receive a report on the program by the end of 2022.
Ms Aitchison also questioned the government's $540 million fixing country roads program.
She said the program's website was "decommissioned" in November last year until another funding round was announced with 69 council applications "still sitting idle and $80 million diverted from the program".
Mr Farraway said some applications were still being assessed and he would have more to say on the program later in the year.
Ms Aitchison said the government would face anger and frustration from voters in regional NSW at the March 2023 election because of the "terrible" state of local roads.
Mr Farraway said he believed if the government continued to engage with the community and explain the rebuild plan "the politics would take care of itself".
Kelly Fuller hosts Parli-waffle on ABC Local Radio in regional NSW on Friday mornings.
