Hibbard Hall should be a warm place this winter, thanks to construction scheduled to wrap up this week. Workers have been replacing pipes that return steam condensate to the power plant, Andrew Soll said.

The pipes were leaking, threatening to pollute the Chippewa River.

The construction has resulted in a section of Garfield Avenue being reduced to one lane. Cars on both sides must wait for the lane to clear before proceeding.

On Tuesday afternoon, westbound vehicles, including a state-owned van, were observed pushing through a drove of students as the single lane cleared for oncoming traffic. The students were crossing the street during the break just before 1 p.m. classes.

“It’s a hazard. They need to wrap this up,” Father George Szews, pastor of the Roman Catholic parish at the Ecumenical Religious Center, said.

Construction is scheduled to end today, Soll said.

“If the weather cooperates, we may make that, but if not, it’ll be not more than a couple days,” he said.

“What weather?” Szews said. “We had no rain yesterday. We had nothing bad yesterday,” he said about Monday’s weather.

Szews said he saw no one working on the site Monday.

But the weather that day was “perfectly fine,” associate professor of geography Richard Palm said. “Skies were sunny with no undo amounts of wind, and no rain.”

Tuesday, the construction trench was still open with pipes lying along the ground, and again, no one was working.

Palm described Tuesday’s weather as off and on light rain showers.

“Those three sprinkles today couldn’t have hurt a thing,” Szews said. “I don’t know how they can put in sidewalk and sod and fill the trench in what is now only three days,” he said.

The center has hosted weddings every Saturday in October, he said, and the construction made access difficult for those attending.

The project, which cost $128,000, was contracted by M. Z. Construction of Lindon.