![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/hur539earthkaiapoi.jpg\")
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The Waimakariri District Council is planning to upgrade stormwater drainage in Woodend. Photo: David Hill \/ North Canterbury News<\/p>\n
Plans to upgrade Woodend’s pipes along the main road have been brought forward so it will be finished before the new highway bypass is completed.<\/p>\n
The Waimakariri District Council this week gave the go ahead to upgrade water mains and stormwater drainage in the Canterbury town.<\/p>\n
Motorists could face delays along State Highway 1 during the work.<\/p>\n
Staff plan to install around 1300m of water main of various sizes along Main North Road (State Highway 1) through Woodend and 45m for a new stormwater main at the intersection of School Road and Main North Road.<\/p>\n
The council\u2019s water and wastewater asset manager Caroline Fahey said staff had considered delaying the work until the Woodend Bypass is completed, but wanted to ensure the infrastructure is resilient.<\/p>\n
The mains were installed in the 1970s, making them around 50 years old.<\/p>\n
Ms Fahey said there was provision in the 2024\/34 Long Term Plan to spend $1.37m on upgrading the Woodend stormwater drainage, which would be debt funded, but not until the later years of the 10 year plan.<\/p>\n
She warned the cost was likely to be higher due to costs associated with traffic management and extending the original scope of work, including installing 250m of new mains.<\/p>\n
A budget will be presented to the council in May to be included in this year\u2019s 2026\/27 annual plan.<\/p>\n
There will be disruption to traffic, but staff will endeavour to communicate with local residents and will plan to reduce the impact, Ms Fahey said.<\/p>\n
Once the Woodend Bypass is completed and becomes SH1, Main North Road through Woodend will revert to being a local road.<\/p>\n
Mayor Dan Gordon said he supported the decision to bring the work forward.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018It\u2019s important work and we\u2019ve got to continue doing it. We have seen what happens when councils don\u2019t invest in infrastructure.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Cr Shona Powell said there was never a right time to do the work, \u2018\u2018but the best time is before it fails\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018And it\u2019s better to do it before the Woodend Bypass is built, so when the road becomes a local road again people will actually get their road back.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Deputy Mayor Philip Redmond said keeping infrastructure up to date needed to be a priority.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018We pride ourselves on having a long term infrastructure plan. Pipes do fail and we need to have a renewals plan to keep on top of the work.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Councillors approved a request from staff for an extra $60,000 to complete the design work at a council meeting last week.<\/p>\n
No councillors expressed opposition to bringing the work forward.<\/p>\n
The project is expected to go out for tender in July, with the aim of starting work in November. It is expected to take about three months.<\/p>\n
\u25a0 LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Waimakariri District Council is planning to upgrade stormwater drainage in Woodend. Photo: David Hill \/ North Canterbury…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-323128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}