The cost of repairing roads damaged by wet weather is draining council finances. 

Communities across New South Wales and Victoria have seen flooding in a number of areas, and water storages spilling over.

Local governments already paid significant costs to deal with their local road networks, but the extra damage from recent downfalls is leaving little for anything else. 

“It’s probably somewhere in the vicinity of $4 million a year we have allocated to road maintenance,” Towong Shire Council Mayor Andrew Whitehead has told reporters.

“In a wet year like that, will it be enough? Probably not, but we know we just have to do the best we can with what we've got.

“Otherwise, we have to start thinking about allocating money out of other budgets, which is never popular.”

Additionally, Yarriambiack Shire Council in Victoria's west this week decided to reallocate $417,000 from its capital works program to pay for repairs on seven unsafe dirt and bitumen roads.

Cr Whitehead is calling on the Victorian government to reinstate the Fixing Country Roads program, which used to help cover the costs of road maintenance.

The program was set up to run for two years between 2018 and 2020. It helped deliver more than 220 local roads projects for councils.

The state government spokesperson says $780 million is being invested in maintaining and renewing the arterial road network for the current financial year.

“Over the past four years we have averaged $813 million per year on road maintenance compared to an average of $493 million per year when the Coalition were last in office,” a spokesperson said.

“Since 2014, we’ve rebuilt or resurfaced more than 12,000 kilometres of our state’s roads to ensure their quality and safety.

“We have another 1,000 projects currently being delivered this maintenance season.”

Meanwhile, in New South Wales, Federation Council Mayor Patrick Bourke says consecutive years of heavy rainfall is taking a toll on road systems too.

“As a council at the moment, we're taking about $9 million in rates and we're spending about $8 million on roads,” Cr Bourke said.

“We heavily rely on grants and government assistance to keep our roads in a reasonable condition.”

The council is applying for a special rate variation to help deal with the road repair challenges.

“We believe we've got a shortfall of about $4 million that should be going in extra to our roads every year,” he said.