Water outage begins Tuesday for MAWC customers in Murrysville, Penn Township, Jeannette

Water service will be disrupted for nearly 300 Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County customers on Tuesday as work crews replace two inoperable valves on a major transmission line from Murrysville to Jeannette.

Work is expected to begin shortly after 3 a.m. on July 19 and take about 24 hours to complete, authority spokesman Matthew Junker said.

“This is just preventive maintenance. These are 5,800-pound valves on our 36-inch lines. It takes special equipment to take them out and put in new valves,” Junker said.

Although there is no imminent threat of a leak, the project is expected to prevent a potential large-scale outage, he said.

The authority provides water to more than 122,000 customers in five counties including Westmoreland, Armstrong, Allegheny, Fayette and Indiana.

Officials said businesses and homes — including several small apartment buildings — will be impacted by the outage. No schools or hospitals are contained in the area, Junker said.

The impacted area begins in the Murrysville area, near Route 66, and runs south through parts of Claridge in Penn Township towards Route 130 in Jeannette.

An interactive map of the work zone was posted on the authority’s website.

“We recommend that people fill their tubs or buckets of water so they have water to use in their toilets, if they want,” Junker said.