LEWISTON – City crews finished replacing a broken water main Wednesday afternoon and now will take a couple of days to test the connection.

Water crews were to fill the 24-inch cast iron pipe with highly chlorinated water overnight Wednesday and flush it today, according to Public Services Director David Jones. That’s designed to disinfect the pipe and check for leaks.

“It should be back on line Friday,” he said.

A cap on the pipe broke sometime last week, beginning a heavy leak in the city’s water system. The water department noticed the problem about 3 a.m. Friday. The water in the city’s reservoir tanks on Webber Avenue should have been about 25 feet deep. It was only 6 feet deep, however, and pumps used to refill the tank had no affect.

City crews fanned out across the city searching for the leak all day Friday and Saturday morning before locating it on a main buried below Island Avenue. That’s a dead-end road just north of Espo’s Trattoria on Main Street. The leak was pouring city water into the Androscoggin River, beneath the river’s ice.

City crews detoured water service around the broken main Saturday afternoon and had started repairs on Monday.

Jones said he does not know how much the incident will cost the city.

“We don’t have those estimates in yet, but I assume it will be absorbed in the rest of the public services budget,” he said. “If that means we don’t finish some project this year, we won’t finish some project.”