Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County seeks to extend charter to 2073

Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County board members want the water and sewer utility to stick around for another half century.

The board Wednesday formally asked that county commissioners extend the authority’s charter until 2073, a move they said will enable the agency to take out a lengthy loan to pay for expansion of a sewer treatment plant in Avonmore.

Solicitor Scott Avolio said commissioners last issued a maximum 50-year reauthorization for the authority in 2006. Commissioners could consider the request at their next public meeting in October.

Officials said the extension is needed to accommodate a 40-year loan to help pay for the sewer plant expansion project that has been in the planning stages for the last several years. Financing agencies require the authority to be authorized for the duration of the loan, said MAWC business manager Brian Hohman.

The $4.8 million project will be paid for though the loan and a $3.5 million federal grant to update and expand the plant that services about 400 sewer customers.

The authority purchased the Avonmore sewer system in 2001. In the past two decades MAWC has bought nearly a dozen other sewer systems that services more than 31,000 customers.

The authority’s water system remains MAWC’s primary focus, serving more than 122,000 water customers in Westmoreland, Allegheny, Armstrong, Fayette and Indiana counties.

Board members Wednesday awarded a $990,000 contract to Ligonier Construction to replace more than a half-mile of a 120-year-old water transmission line in East Huntingdon that brings water from the authority’s Indian Creek Water Treatment Plant in Connellsville to North Versailles.

Deputy manager Tom Ceraso said the cement cast iron 30-inch pipe is in dire need of repair.

“The bank where it sits is eroding to where the pipe is exposed to the stream, so now this is a priority,” Ceraso said.

The pipe runs along a former railroad line and served as a main distributor of water to fuel steam engines that operated to and from Pittsburgh. MAWC took over the transmission line in the 1960s.

Ceraso said the nearly $3.7 million project cost includes design work, permitting, supplies and installation, is expected to begin in October and continue into January. No service interruptions are anticipated during the construction work, Ceraso said.