Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County officials said Wednesday the agency continued to serve its more than 123,000 customers even as late April’s violent storms shut off power to hundreds of thousands of residents.

“Nobody noticed we kept the water flowing,” said authority business manager Brian Hohman as administrators briefed authority board members. Operations continued through a nearly 49-hour outage last month at the George R. Sweeney treatment plant at the Beaver Run Reservoir in Bell and Washington townships as workers waited for the power to be restored.

Those April storms resulted in at least three deaths and left about 320,000 area residents in the dark, some for multiple days and others for up to a week. The authority’s Sweeney water plant, which serves about half of the authority’s northern customer base, operated with large generators as well as an estimated 70 smaller units throughout the system to ensure water continued to flow, officials said.

Battery backups were put online to sustain portable generators at dozens of pump stations throughout the system while larger units were powered by 110 gallons of diesel fuel each hour throughout the electrical outages, said authority manager Michael Kukura.

Officials touted nearly $7 million in system upgrades over the last dozen years that specifically focused on the purchase of generators.

“Ten years ago we would have been in trouble,” said authority board Chairman Randy Roadman.

The heavy rains over the last month have led to water levels rising at the Beaver Run Reservoir, which nearly overflowed its banks, according to Hohman.

Low water levels at the reservoir last year prompted usage restrictions for customers and concerns that dry conditions continued into early this year led to continued calls for voluntary rationing. As of the end of April, the reservoir was just below its historical seasonal average.

Weather also impacted the southern half of MAWC’s distribution system supplied by water taken from the Youghiogheny River. The authority’s Indian Creek Water Treatment Plant in Connellsville was besieged by torrents of muddy water related to flooding upriver after storms hit the area last week.

Officials said treatment efforts required additional work to successfully clean water that was six times dirtier than in normal conditions.

“We weathered the storms,” Hohman said.

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