Trucking industry leaders are backing calls for safety improvements to the narrow windy road on the eastern side of Lake Taupō.

But their solution to the problem differs from that of the Taupō District Council.

A freight truck driver received moderate injuries after crashing and rolling his vehicle into the lake on Sunday morning.

The truck was carrying krill oil with milk powder, forcing the road to close for more than 24 hours as the spillage was cleaned up.

In 2002, a pile of logs fell from a truck into the lake, and then in 2009, a driver was killed when a truck plunged 25 metres into the water.

Ia Ara Aotearoa Transporting New Zealand has previously criticised Waka Kotahi for focusing solely on reducing speeds, rather than maintaining the safety of roads.

The truck crashed into Lake Taupo on State Highway 1. Photo: Chris Smith.

Chief executive Nick Leggett told Morning Report his group has voiced its concerns for a number of years and wants to see the stretch of road at Bulli Point widened as it's "extremely tight" for trucks.

There are detours around the other side of the lake, but SH1 is quickest for truck drivers to travel on.

Leggett says Waka Kotahi has said it's aware of the concerns, and will work to improve it overtime.

But Leggett says this is just an example of roads known to be dangerous that are not improved quick enough because of funding constraints.

"This is the sort of piecemeal attitude we get to infrastructure in New Zealand," he told Morning Report.

"A lack of long-term thinking, a lack of safety improvements and we see, sadly, from what happened in the last 24 hours the results of that."

"It's a priority in resources but it's something that does compromise safety on our roads and in my view, leads to more accidents."

Taupō District Council chief executive Gareth Green told Morning Report the lake is a taonga and has to be protected from environmental danger.

Teams have been down to the lake to clear it of the krill oil with milk powder as best they could but "large volumes" had fallen into it.

"That will inevitably have an issue on wildlife and fish life and on our water," Green says.

"That lake is a taonga for us so anything going in there is anything too much."

Green doesn't believe widening the road is possible given there is rock overhang and "big drops" off to the lake - but there is an alternative route that could be built, bypassing the area altogether.

"It's been out there for about 30 years, 40 years, in the plans and obviously things only get more expensive as time goes on."

Green couldn't give a number but says it will be a "big bill". He says it's worth it, given the importance of Lake Taupō.

"It's our freshwater taonga. It provides water all through the Waikato into Auckland so protecting that water quality and that lake is of utmost importance nationally and therefore for us, is a real priority.

"All we are asking for is for that to be investigated, pulled up the priority list and put into the plans."

Green told Morning Report not only are more people dying on that stretch of road, but there would be an "environmental disaster".

-RNZ.