Concrete being poured behind a retaining wall and structural steel columns at site four, the most complex flood damaged site on SH6. Photo: RNZ / Samantha Gee
The state highway between Nelson and Blenheim is due to finally reopen thi evening, seven weeks after it was closed for emergency flood repairs.
Waka Kotahi's top of the south regional manager Mark Owen said the road will reopen to two lanes at 6pm and there may be some temporary traffic management in place until road surfacing and marking was finished.
It will open four hours earlier than what was originally planned.
Waka Kotahi was advising motorists to beware of loose chip on the newly sealed roads and urged drivers to take extra care.
The highway has been closed between Hira and Rai Valley for the past seven weeks for crews to repair damage caused by the August floods.
"It was a big call in the first place for us to close the main highway and we knew that was going to have a significant impact.
Debris lies across SH6 between Nelson and Blenheim. Photo: Supplied / Waka Kotahi
"But we looked at the greater good and said we need to make this route more resilient, there were some one lane sections and some high risk areas."
Owen said from the beginning, the plan was to reopen the road by December 18 ahead of the busy holiday season and contractors had been working long days and nights in some cases to get the road reopened.
More than $15m has been spent on repairing the road, with four significant underslip sites that needed retaining walls built, and 30 new culverts were installed on the severely damaged section of road.
Owen said it had been a big challenge to get work of this scale done in severn weeks, under challenging conditions.
It had also been an opportunity to improve the route's resilience and make it more resistant to bad weather events.
He said some minor work would be needed on the highway in the new year, but nothing that would force a full closure of the road again.