Rodney Stevens

The cost to rebuild and repair more than 2500 projects of flood ravaged public infrastructure on the Northern Rivers following the devastating 2022 floods is estimated at $7.9 billion and is predicted to increase.

Last week when the Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation NRRC hosted about 250 trade, industry and government representatives at a conference at Tweed Heads to be briefed on infrastructure spending, the invitation to the event referred to an estimated $6 billion repair cost, which has since been revised to $7.9 billion following the conference.

NRRC head David Witherdin said the increase in costs was expected as the corporation identified more projects.

“That’s grown from even earlier this year, from about $3.5 billion, and will continue to be refined over time,” he said. 

“These are our best estimates of the tasks we’ve got ahead of us — more than 2,500 projects, so the enormity of what we’re dealing with here is really significant.”

The biggest expense in the rebuild, Mr Witherdin said will be the repair of transport infrastructure, particularly the number of landslips to be rectified across the region.

“We’ve got hundreds of those (landslips) — some really challenging geo-technical conditions,” he said.

Currently the NRRC are looking at prioritising key projects, and Mr Witherdin said it was likely that the rebuild cost will exceed $8 billion.