Moray Council has confirmed a £500,000 repairs package is required to prevent sections of a local port from being sealed off.
The local authority has backed plans to seek funding to cover the majority of the work necessary to prevent pontoon berths at Findochty harbour from slipping further into dilapidation.
Elected members were yesterday presented with papers which revealed it would only be possible to extend pontoon facilities at the coastal village if half a million pounds was spent on upgrading existing landing stages.
The council is willing to allocate as much as £107,000 from its capital budget towards fixing the problem.
But officers have said the remainder of the money will have to come from external bodies.
During the meeting of the local authority’s economic development and infrastructure services committee, councillors learned about the dire state of some parts of the harbour.
Transportation manager Nicola Moss said: “Work is required soon if things deteriorate further, and that depends on weather conditions.
“Without improvement work within three years, it’s likely that the pontoons would deteriorate to an extent where we felt we would have to close off access to them.”
Buckie councillor, Gordon McDonald, described the picturesque port as “iconic” and added the authority should do everything in its power to maintain the pontoon berths.
He said: “We have one option where we would have to close the whole pontoon because it’s unfit. This is an iconic harbour, which features in a lot of our tourism brochures, and failure to tackle this would impact on visitor numbers.”
Fellow ward member, Sonya Warren, claimed the pontoons offered a “lifeline” to small businesses in and around the village.
Officers have already applied for a grant of £300,000 from the Big Lottery Fund’s Coastal Communities Fund.
They confirmed that if the request and others like it were successful, work on upgrading the harbour could be complete by the end of 2017.
Councillors unanimously agreed to proceed with plans to seek external funding to perform the improvements.
Harbour users at Findochty have long called for more pontoons to be added to the port, and it is understood there is a waiting list of 80 people eager to gain a