A section of Garden of the Gods Road is expected to remain closed for several more days while crews repair a water main that ruptured Tuesday afternoon, causing traffic delays and interruptions to local businesses.

Both directions of the roadway between North Chestnut Street and Rusina Road may not open until early next week while crews work on repairs, Colorado Springs Utilities announced Wednesday afternoon.

“There’s been buckling of the asphalt and road, and so safety is our number one priority and concern,” Jennifer Kemp, a spokeswoman with Colorado Springs Utilities, said.

Excavation crews, construction crews and other underground utility workers are laboring around the clock to ensure the water infrastructure repairs are completed. The main delay in reopening the roadway will be the repaving process, Kemp said.

“With the nation opening up again and construction projects booming, the demand for asphalt has been huge,” Kemp said. “And I’m sure there are supply chain issues too, as with other products.”

Yesterday, Kemp said crews may also use the road closure for additional projects, like repairing patches of road unrelated to the water leak or potentially installing permanent alternative water sources for the area.

Heavy machinery dug in the muck Wednesday morning, trying to expose more of the broken pipe and assess whether other sections of the line were at risk of breaking.

Colorado Springs Utilities detected the break around noon Tuesday and later discovered the rupture began on a connection point between two pipes.

“We’re not 100% sure why the failure happened,” said Ted Skroback, a Springs Utilities spokesman. “We can identify where the failure is, but why it happened is what’s under investigation now.”

Construction crews first had to scoop buckets of muddy water to reach the coupling failure, spokeswoman Natalie Watts said, which added hours of work.

While machinery rumbled and clanged at the site of the water main break, fast-food, hotel and gas station parking lots along the shut down strip of road appeared desolate.

“We’ve had less business,” Jordan Mueller, the manger of a Qdoba on the block, said.

Other store managers on the block expressed the same concern. But Mueller said the restaurant’s water access was unaffected.

“We were able to reroute some of that water, and I believe we have it narrowed down to less than half a dozen business that don’t have access through their normal source,” Kemp said. “That’s why we’ve provided alternative water sources.”

In some cases that meant bringing trucks of potable water.

“We’re waiting to get those supplies in and those materials in that we need to completely finish getting the road ready to be safe and drivable,” Kemp said.

Down the road, another water leak on a private water line caused a sinkhole to open up in front of the Baymont by Wyndham on Wednesday afternoon, catching by surprise a driver entering the McDonald’s, thinking she was going over running rainwater.

Luckily, she wasn’t injured, and her car wasn’t heavily damaged.

“It looks a lot worse than it is,” Alyssa Wilbert said.

The leak also forced businesses nearby — like the 7-Eleven just in front of the hole — to go without water.

“We do not have running water at this time. No one on this property has running water,” hotel manager Jennifer Sweets said. “We have hired our own plumber that the businesses here will share to get this fixed as quickly as possible.”

That sinkhole, Skroback said, was completely unrelated to the work Springs Utilities was doing on the other side of I-25 because the line that broke on Wednesday was owned by the businesses. Still, city crews helped shut off the water to the leak and had helped with staking off the area.

Correction: Closures caused by the water main break were updated to North Chestnut Street and Rusina Road.