A leaking water line along Route 873 in Slatington has been fixed.

Borough Manager Dan Stevens said the line was repaired on Wednesday.

Stevens said traffic was reduced to one lane with flagger force to direct traffic.

He said the work was done in about three hours.

“They got it done pretty fast,” Stevens said. “It was a pretty good leak; we’ve been looking for it.”

Stevens said that was the leak that they dug a hole at the end of Union Street a few weeks ago because they thought it was there because there’s a 90-degree turn in the line.

He said it turned out it was further down.

“It was a considerable leak; it was all going down into the ground,” Stevens said. “Actually, we found that our levels in the reservoirs are even higher than they were, so we think it may have been leaking before, but we didn’t know it.”

Stevens said they estimated it was leaking probably between 50,000 to 60,000 gallons a day.

“It wasn’t just our leak, LCA (Lehigh County Authority) had a leak on their line in Washington Township,” he said, adding that they fixed theirs on Tuesday. “We had received some complaints about some brown water; it turns out it was because of a leak out in Washington Township; we’ve had that happen several times.

“There was a leak in Washington Township, and it was stirring up our system. It’s a bad time of year; the freeze/thaw cycles aren’t good.”

That came after it was announced at Monday’s borough council meeting that the leak was discovered on the east side of Route 873 at the crest of the hill near Rentschler’s Chevrolet garage.

“It’s in the worst possible place,” Councilman Bryon Reed said at the meeting. “When you come out of Slatington, just past Rentschler at the crest of the hill, on the right side.”

Stevens noted that the borough had a water line break just before Christmas.

“We were looking for it back then,” he said.

At that time, the borough issued a boil water advisory for all residences and businesses from Williams Street north.

For that incident, a water line broke on Kuehner Avenue. Water service completely stopped with the breakage.

That line was repaired as well.