Road update
Recently the Wolgan Valley community had our regular monthly call with Lithgow Council concerning the application for funding to build a new road into the valley. Council has worked closely with the landowners in the valley and kept us up to speed with all aspects of this complex project.
There are two important streams of activity related to this project – first being the application for funding to build a new road and the second concurrent activity is the planning process to build the road once funding is secured.
On the first item, Council has indicated they hope to have approval for the funding by April after a very detailed and complex review process undertaken by three levels of government. Fingers crossed for that one.
In parallel, work has already begun on all the necessary steps to build the road once funding is approved. This includes the appointment of Design Consultants who will do the concept design, the mandatory EIS report and other key tasks. They will also support Council in selecting a contractor to build the road.
There are numerous other technical specialist consultants required for this big project and they are also all getting organised at this time. So that’s all good.
The high level timeline is for the Preferred Option to be finalised by the end of 1Q2025, the EIS to be completed by the end of 3Q2025 and a contractor to be signed by the end of 4Q2025. At this stage they are estimating the project will be completed by 1Q2031.
So yes, it’s a long project and there’s a mountain of things that still have to happen before we get a completed road but our path is getting clearer which is good news.
