Lower Hutt needs to fix more than 200km of water pipes - mayor

The Mayor of Lower Hutt is calling for change as Wellington grapples with a serious need for water infrastructure investment.

In a freak accident on Friday, a water pipe burst under a woman's car in Wellington, likely writing it off.

Lower Hutt Mayor Campbell Barry told Breakfast that fixing the failing infrastructure was a cost the city could not afford. "It is a huge challenge.

"In Lower Hutt alone, we have a backlog of 236km of pipe that needs to be renewed.

"We have escalating costs in just delivering what's already in our plans. It is a big challenge."

Barry said about $1.9 billion towards addressing the issue was approved in the Wellington region's long-term plans.

"We're being told by the board chair of Wellington Water that that needs to be increased to around $7.6 billion," he said.

"That's a significant increase and it's pretty unaffordable within the current funding and financing tools that councils have."

Double-digit rate rises are already proposed in the region.

"Councils are basically starting to get to their debt caps," Barry explained. "They're not able to borrow above that.

"What that means is that they need to be putting in larger rate increases in the shorter term to be able to fund it. We need a different type of mechanism to be able to spread that cost over a longer period of time, given that we're dealing with decades of under-investment.

"We would be staring down the barrel of a decade of astronomical rate increases if we were to fund what we need to when it comes to water infrastructure in the Wellington region.

"That's simply not doable when we see the challenges that residents and our business community are currently facing."

Instead, he wants to see new ideas.

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"We do need the Government to work with us on a different model so we can get on top of this.

"What we need is urgency, because we are staring down the barrel of significant rate increases up and down the country due to this challenge, as well as all of the other challenges that the councils are facing when it comes to increasing costs as well."