A damaged 400-foot section of Halls Ferry Road between Williams Road and Cain Ridge Road remained blocked off Tuesday after it was torn up Monday afternoon to repair a broken 12-inch main waterline.

Traffic in the area of the repair is restricted to one lane each way, with cars detoured to the outside lanes.

City water and gas superintendent Dane Lovell said the estimated 50-year-old waterline was repaired by removing and replacing a section of the line. He said the work was completed about 9 p.m. Monday and a boil water notice for the area was lifted Tuesday morning.

Vicksburg Public Works Director Garnet Van Norman said employees for Florence-based Hemphill Construction did the repairs. The company, he said, will also make the repairs to the road that was damaged but said no date has been set to start the repairs.

Van Norman said the contractor, which has the contract to build the city’s auxiliary waterline, was called because the water department is short-handed.

“We’re down so far in the water department, we didn’t have but one foreman at work,” Van Norman said. “We’re going to declare an emergency and pay them for fixing the line and fixing the street.”

City utilities and street department workers were notified of the leak about 2:15 p.m. Monday and closed the street from Williams Road to Cain Ridge Road because sections of the street’s asphalt paving were bulging and cracking with water flowing through the broken areas.

“It (the line) was blowing up under the asphalt,” Lovell said.

The problem was compounded because three waterlines were under the street.

Van Norman said the lines were part of an elevated water storage tank that was once located at the corner of Cain Ridge and Halls Ferry, where Highland Baptist Church is now.

“We had lines running all over the place,” Van Norman said.

Water service to about 100 customers on Cain Ridge Road, Williams Road and from Halls Ferry to South Frontage Road was temporarily disconnected during the repairs.