Duke of Wellington Bridge erosion could have been prevented, Soil Conservation Service report shows

But according to a report in 2018 from the Soil Conservation Service, this disaster could have been prevented.

The report stated that the erosion along the Duke of Wellington Bridge was of 'high priority' with 'severe erosion along approximately 270 metres of the bank and up to 10 metres high'.

The report went on to say that 'erosion since 2005 has retreated by up to 38 metres, three metres per year and is attributable to flood events in 2010 and 2016.

"Top of bank is now within 40 metres of Gobolion Street and erosion has the potential to impact on the road and the low level Macquarie River bridge within possibly 10 to 20 years," the report stated.

The options the report gave Dubbo Regional Council was to:

None of these things took place.

Dubbo Regional Council mayor Mathew Dickerson said the previous council not doing anything to protect the bridge was "disappointing".

"The time to take some action was when we had a drought, you had a drought in 2018, the report was written in November 2018, so that was the time to do work on the river," he said.

"The report states the low level bridge would possibly be impacted within 10 to 20 years but of course they didn't know in 2018 that in 2022 we were going to have an incredibly wet year, an unprecedented wet year with flood events."

Cr Dickerson said now was not the time to be addressing the issue of the erosion.

"With all that water in there it's a very difficult area to work on with high water flows, you wouldn't attempt to do repairs like that with all the water flows we've had," he said.

The current group of councillors were given the report in August 2022, and haven't attempted to resolve the issue in the months since.

"The issue is prevention is better than a cure, unfortunately prevention didn't occur. We obviously know that would've been cheaper then a cure," the mayor said.

Going forward council will engage engineers to look at the structure of the bridge to see if it is in good enough condition to stay where it's currently located.

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With Gobolion Street closed to traffic, the engineers will be looking at the possibilities of undoing the erosion, moving the bridge or whether council will have to leave it closed.

"We don't know the answers to these questions but this is where we will need to get some engineer reports to see what the best thing to do with it is," Cr Dickerson said.

In the report a number of areas were called out as being high priority, but the mayor said until there were low water flows or a drought occurred, only then would the issues be addressed.

The council has applied for $300,000 under the state governments resilience fund, but Cr Dickerson said they were also working in house to find the money for different projects.

"We have put in funding applications to address some of these issues but there are times when council has to work out ways to fund various aspects," he said.

"There is no point waiting for someone to come along and bail you out, at times you have to take action."

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