After a water leak forced the Town of Marion to shut off water service to the majority of residents on Friday, town officials are bracing for the cost of repairs and looking to avoid shutdowns in the future.

In a meeting Tuesday, Mayor Larry Gill said workers driving pilings for a new bridge along Dale Drive accidentally punctured a water line approximately 13 feet below ground. While utility companies normally come mark the location of their lines before workers break ground, Gill said the depth of the water line put it beyond what would be marked. Puncturing it, he said, was an accident.

“There’s no way you’re gonna be able to mark a 13-foot water line before you start,” he said.

The leak was stopped late Friday night after workers installed valves on the water line on either side of the bridge site, Gill said. That stopped the leak and gave crews the space they needed to work without worrying about further damaging the town’s pipes.

Once the bridge is complete, however, the town will need to bore under the new construction to reconnect the water line. That project, Gill said, is expected to come with a hefty price tag.

“That’s probably gonna cost a lot of money to go back in and bore and go from one side to the other to reconnect, but that’s something we’re going to deal with down the line,” he said. “We can get by with what we’ve got right now, but eventually we’ll want to connect all the way through.”

Although the leak was stopped, Marion was forced to shut off water to most of the town, Gill said, and that isn’t a good solution. In the coming months, he said he will be drawing up plans to hire a contractor to install valves in strategic points throughout the town. Having valves in place will allow the town to keep water shutoffs isolated to small areas such as a neighborhood or street.

“I don’t what the situation again where everybody is out of water,” he said.

Marion already has some valves in place, and the first step is to find them and see if they work, Gill said. Once the town knows what it already has, a plan can be made to move forward.

Finally, the town did not have the valves for Friday’s repairs on hand and borrowed some from the City of Meridian and Toomsuba Water System, Gill said. Replacement valves have already been ordered to repay the two entities. The valves are estimated to cost about $1,000 each.