Burst main a hole lot of trouble
Contractors worked through the night last week to fix a hole in State Highway 1 north of Porirua.
A water main burst underneath the highway about 9.45am on Tuesday, pushing the asphalt upwards, leaving cracks in the road and closing a lane.
NZ Transport Agency contractor Fulton Hogan worked through the night to fix the warped concrete, after Wellington Regional Council replaced two metres of destroyed pipe.
Wellington water supply operations manager Noel Roberts said council staff were doing routine work on the pipe, and had just managed to re-attach it when ‘‘it turned around and blew’’.
The force of the water burst through the road, flooding the left southbound lane and leaving a hole in the road between the Plimmerton weigh station and roundabout.
Traffic was delayed and it took a team about two hours to locate the faulty valve and turn it off.
‘‘ We have to do a postmortem as to why exactly it went. Our initial thought is that it was a pipe fault,’’ Mr Roberts said.
NZTA central operations manager Mark Owen said cars reported driving over a ‘‘big bump’’ in the road, which swelled as water pooled beneath it when the main burst.
The regional council and the agency would discuss who was responsible for paying for the road, and how much it would cost, Mr Owen said.