Federation Council has apologised to residents impacted by a blunder that put lives and property at risk when a country road near Rennie was filled with "rubbish".
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The Council paid a contractor to grade Pattersons Road last month and provided the material for him to do so, after significant rain had caused large holes.
General Manager Adrian Butler said Council provided recycled crushed concrete, because the usual gravel with large stones was not available.
This material is crushed at the Corowa landfill and was believed suitable for this purpose at the time," he said.
"Unfortunately the material still had a residual amount of scrap steel in it that staff were not aware of.
"It appears that this material has progressively worked its way to the surface either during the spreading and grading or following wear from traffic.
"Council sincerely apologises to road users and residents for this occurrence."
Rennie farmer Bill Ferguson, who regularly uses the road, said he'd spent about $2000 in the last month replacing tyres which had blown on the road.
"It's full of broken concrete with reinforcing steel in it, bricks, tiles, you name it, absolute rubbish, plastic, brushes," he said.
"What happens if my wife drives down that road at 80 kilometers an hour, which we all do down back roads, and gets a blow out and ends up in a tree?
"It's absolutely ridiculous that they could actually do things like this.
"If they dropped it in the main street of Corowa there'd be an uproar."
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Mr Butler said following the problem being raised, Council staff conducted a walkthrough of the Pattersons Road site to remove any visible pieces.
"Moving forward, Council plans to cover the patched area with natural road gravel as soon as weather permits," he said.
"The area of road will also be inspected regularly over the coming months to ensure that if there are any remaining metal pieces exposed, that they do not create further hazards.
"It is not intended that Council will use this material again in this circumstance, however Council will continue to actively work to reduce waste to landfill by recycling products such as concrete."
Mr Ferguson said it was fine that council had owned up to its mistake, but there needed to be a meeting between local landholders about rural roads.
"That's only one section of road we're talking about and council need to rejig their thoughts on long term road maintenance," he said.
"There has to be a meeting with Pat Bourke."
Mr Ferguson said Pattersons Road needed to be completely dug up to make it safe.
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