West Coast Regional Council
An aerial view of the cleared slip highlighted in yellow below the Kiwi Quarry access road. The slip ended up on the Greymouth-Stillwater Railway on June 13.
West Coast Regional Council says it is urgently working on a solution potential risk of stone chips from a disused quarry near Blackball.
The case came up last month after a professional assessment of the municipality’s quarrying operations.
Potential risk to the public was identified at disused regional council-owned sites in both Blackball and Kiwi Point.
The Blackball-Croesus Rd runs under the old Blackball quarry and was widened by the Gray District Council in 2019-20 to allow access to the new Paparoa track.
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Heather Mabin, chief executive of the regional council, said they had spoken to both the Gray District Council and the Department of Conservation (DOC) as a concerned party.
“DOC requested the access road or public road under the [district council] country are being changed and they are open to participating in those discussions,” Mabin said.
“That’s all moving forward, and I’ve sensed a sense of urgency as there is a potential risk to people traveling along that particular road.”
The Blackball site had been given a higher priority, she said.
The council was informed last month that the disused Blackball site posed a potential risk to the recently widened road, “with rock looking for the exit to the road”.
Consultant Keri Harrison said access to the Blackball quarry had been compromised by the road widening and loose material posed a potential fall risk.
Justine Tyerman/delivered
The TranzAlpine, pictured at Greymouth Railway Station. The passenger train ended up in the slip at the rail bridge at Blackball last month. (File photo)
Ideally, the site would be closed permanently, but risk at the site needs to be reduced to meet new regulatory requirements for quarry operators, she said.
Gray District Council operations manager Aaron Haymes said on Friday he had yet to visit the site but expected to do so with the road engineer early next week.
He believed that the risk was located around the cut-off entrance to the old quarry rather than the road.
“I would be absolutely amazed that we made a way and the [quarry] access has been left as it is.”
Making one road safer and the other less was clearly not a desirable outcome, he said.
The municipality would rely on the professional geotechnical assessment to manage the situation, taking into account the size of the potential crushed stone material and the distance from the quarry to the road.
“We want to make sure that an engineer with the right credentials provides usage advice on how safe it is to begin with.”