MINOT (AP) - Crews working to pipe Missouri River water to northwestern North Dakota are finding water is getting in their way.

ERS Constructors of Centennial, Colo., the company boring tunnels for a pipeline route through Minot, was forced to temporarily halt work on a boring under the Souris River near the U.S. Highway 83 bypass because of quicksand and wet silt.

"We ended up in something that seems to be an old swamp. We can't find the bottom," said Paul Langlois, the boring and tunnel construction division manager for ERS.

Langlois, who has 30 years in the tunneling business, has seen worse.

"There's a way around everything. The technology is there," he said.

The pipeline is part of the Northwest Area Water Supply project to bring Missouri River water to the northwestern part of the state. ERS's newest equipment, a pilot tube, uses a camera and computer technology to build a level tunnel.

"The soil information indicated the soil was poor in that area, anyway, and we were going to run into some ground water," said Michelle Klose, the project manager with the State Water Commission.

"The river has actually gone up since we took those original soil samples. We knew it would be difficult getting through," she said.

"You try to plan as best you can," NAWS engineer Kevin Martin said. "But when you get right down to it, when you start digging the hole and looking at doing these kinds of things, there's always something that's going to jump up, and you have to deal with it."

ERS stopped its work at the bypass site to figure out its next move.

The NAWS contract calls for pipeline about 7.5 feet under the river bed. That much depth is needed to prevent freezing in the pipeline if the river were to go dry. It requires boring as deep as 34 feet.

Pipeline on surface ground is buried to 8 feet. Stronger pipes are used at the lower elevation to handle the additional overburden weight.

Options for ERS include pumping out groundwater or lowering the river level.

In the meantime, the company is moving on to other parts of the project. It is tunneling under water and roads in nine spots for the pipeline.