Nicola Street between 13th Avenue and Columbia Street is closed to traffic today as crews continue to work to fix a water main break, which was reported yesterday afternoon.

“Our crews were out all through the night, a very cold and wet night with just real difficult ground conditions to excavate in with the ground being as frozen as it is,” Utility Services Manager Greg Wightman said. “We were able to get down to the water main break this morning and we’ll be working on it throughout the course of the day here.”

“All indications right now are that it is a six inch cast iron water main and they are a little bit prone to shifting of ground and that can happen when we see the extreme temperatures like we’ve seen here recently.”

Wightman says while there will be minimal impacts to traffic, there are some properties in the area that will be without water today while the repairs are taking place.

“We shut down quite a large area just trying to stop the water from flowing because of how much water was coming out. Once we were able to stop the water from flowing, we were really able to really isolate the areas that were impacted,” he added.

“Its just four properties that are impacted right now around Nicola and 13th. Everything else has water again.”

Wightman says the road is expected to reopen around 4 o’clock this evening.