A burst water main on major traffic route in central Wellington looks set to cause water outages in parts of the city centre and surrounding suburbs for most of the day.
Wellington Water said it was a major repair and was expected to take until at least 10pm to fix. Previously the agency said it would be fixed by 5pm.
Some lanes on Kent and Cambridge Terrace are closed, and drivers going to the airport are being warned to go the coastal route through Oriental Bay.
There will likely be water outages today on Courtenay Place, Kent Terrace, Cambridge Terrace and properties around the suburbs of Mount Victoria, Roseneath and Hataitai.
Photo: RNZ / REECE BAKER
And all of Hay Street and Telford Terrace off Oriental Parade, about 60 properties, will also likely be without water until after midday on Wednesday, due to a seperate outage.
Wellington Water's head of operations and engineering Tim Harty told Midday Report they were struggling to isolate the break because of broken valves.
The repair team was moving through the network, shutting valves to try and stop water flowing into the broken area, but some valves were not operating correctly, making the shut-down area larger than expected.
The full extent of the outages was not yet known, and people in the central city should ring and let Wellington Water know if they lose water.
Cyclists ride through layers of silt as contractors put traffic management in place on Wednesday. Photo: Bill Hickman/RNZ
"Until we get the pipe shut down, we can't get in there and do the repair."
He said the pipe was part of ageing infrastructure.
"Ideally we'd have liked to have gone in there and turned the valves on either side of the break off, isolated the break, and we could have gone straight into the repair, and it just hasn't happened that way."
"So we've just got to keep methodically moving through the system until we can do that."
He said once the extent of the outage was known, they would be sending water tankers out to neighbourhoods.
Contractors were at the scene before 5am on Wednesday, and commuters were warned to take care in the area.
Water was earlier covering nearly three lanes of Kent Terrace and parts of Cambridge Terrace.
Flooding on Kent Terrace. Photo: Bill Hickman/RNZ
One cyclist told RNZ she became stuck in silt from the flooding on her way to work.
"I didn't see the sign, there was no sign to see it and I just thought I was going left instead of straight ahead.
"Fortunately there was someone there to help me get out of it and they were very helpful."
A burst water main flooded major Wellington streets on Wednesday, closing lanes Kent Terrace and Cambridge Terrace. Photo: RNZ / Bill Hickman
