DPW staff outside the Adirondack Center for Writing work on the water main to relive the flooding in the basement of the writing center on Monday. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

SARANAC LAKE — A water main break flooded the basements of some Broadway businesses this past week. After village crews shut off the water supply and repaired the pipe on Monday, village Manager Bachana Tsiklauri said it was “fully fixed” and “up and running.”

Tsiklauri said the culprit was a six-inch cast iron water main running between 13 and 15 Broadway, Heartwood Studios the Adirondack Center for Writing.

“It broke at a joint,” village Department of Public Works employee Jason Rupp said at around 1:30 p.m., shouting over the rumble of a pumper truck and the sound of pebbles getting sucked up into the tube.

He had been pumping out water, which was shooting out from a crack in the pipe several feet under the ground, since about 11 a.m.

The large pumper truck took up a portion of one lane on the main road through town, reducing traffic to one lane, organized by DPW employees for several hours.

Village workers shut off the water shortly after 1:30 p.m., which also shut off water to businesses and residents along that stretch of Broadway, from the ACW up to the Origin coffee shop. Service was restored around 3:30 p.m., according to Tsiklauri.

ACW Communications Manager Tyler Barton said staff at the writing center had removed several rugs and pieces of furniture from the basement due to the flooding, but hadn’t lost any property.

While there was an inch of water in the basement, upstairs was dry and continuing as normal. The center is hosting a poetry open mic on Wednesday.

“That shouldn’t be affected because we haven’t had any problems upstairs,” Barton said.

The center will also be open for ArtWalk on Thursday. On Friday, the center is bringing in author Neal Shusterman, creator of the Arc of a Scythe series, to speak at the Harrietstown Town Hall.

The ACW basement had been host to the “teen writing lab,” where teenagers come after school to get a jump on homework, hang out and do some creative writing with prompts, potentially to be included in the next edition of the center’s “Wild Words: Adirondack Teen Writing Anthology.”

Barton said it was “kind of disappointing.” The school year has just started and there’s been a good group of kids have been coming by around three times a week. Now they’re waiting to come back until the water is gone.

“It’s always been a basement down there. It was never, like, the Ritz-Carlton,” Barton said. “But it was nice and cozy.”

He said the center may be in need of some new rugs.

The leak started last week on Tuesday, with a little pool of water showing up on the floor, Barton said. But it “intensified” after the weekend.

“There was water on the floor, but not this much and it was not this color,” Barton said.

He wants to emphasize, the place is clean. The basement is just a little wet for now.

Barton said the center rents its space from Say Realty and the landlords vacuumed up the water last week. But they will need to come by again now that more water seeped in and the leak has been fixed.

Kyle and Dani Roddy opened their next door boutique gift shop and creative studio Heartwood Studios on Friday. Dani said they were fortunate to only get “a puddle.”

“It’s hardly anything in our basement,” she said.