SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Work is being completed on a section of the Ingraham Trail after it took a beating from high water levels on one side of the road due to a failed culvert between two ponds.

High levels of water around the 13-kilometre mark on the trail, located a few kilometres past the Dettah turn off and before Prosperous Lake, has forced the Department of Transportation to drain water from one side and move it to the other.

A 13-km section of the Ingraham Trail is undergoing work after water began to erode the sides of the road. Work will be complete once a new culvert is installed. - Andrew Livingstone/NNSL photo

Michael Conway, Department of Transportation's regional superintendent for the North Slave region, said the situation with the water levels is unusual.

"We have a lot of water on both sides of the road, but one side is considerably higher than the other," Conway said, adding they are using large pumps to move water from one side of the road to the other. "(We're pumping) the water from one side of the road to the other side to try and equal out the pressure."

He said if they attempted to fix the culvert before equalling out the pressure they would have increased the chance of the road being washed out. Workers built a gravel wall to keep the water from spilling onto the road, a danger that was very close to happening over the past few weeks.

"It would just begin to wash away the road," he said. "We'd have an awful hard time trying to deal with the issue. When we finally do replace that culvert we're not going to have to worry about the water."

In order to protect the environment and fish habitat in the area, the pumps were pointed high into the air to keep foreign materials from getting into the water.

"We put them high in the air like that to ensure we protect the environment and the fish habitat there by not introducing new silts or anything like that into the water," he said, adding they were working closely with Indian and Northern Affairs Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Crews were out Monday morning working on the section of the road. Conway said they hope to have a new culvert in place within the next two weeks to take care of the problem. He said there were a few factors he figures are behind the problem, including a slow and late winter melt.

"It had a chance to sit around a lot more than it normally does and you add on the significant amount of rain we've had and the snowfall from the winter," he said, adding the section of road has dropped significantly over the last decade or so. "It seems the permafrost has melted a bit and there is certainly more water there than there was eight to 10 years ago."