CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A section of McArdle Road will be closed this week as water line repairs begin.
There will be a service outage on Friday for about 35 customers in the area. Nearby Corpus Christi Regional Transportation Authority bus routes will be temporarily rerouted. Cars will have to detour depending on which direction they are headed.
Corpus Christi Water officials said work will begin at 7:30 a.m. on Thursday and conclude by 6 p.m. on Friday. They are working on a broken six-inch valve on a water line, which is a piece of critical infrastructure they explained needs to be fixed.
"It was identified as part of our preventative maintenance program where we go out and test valves, make sure they're operable," said Wesley Nebgen, Director of Water Systems Infrastructure for Corpus Christi Water. "This one was found to be inoperable."
Nebgen said the water line between Whitaker Drive and Prince Drive on McArdle Road is about 55 years old. He explained that repairing the valve now can help prevent any valve failures in the future. He said work will be confined to an area less than a block long.
"It's going to be a very small footprint, you know, 20 feet by 20 feet. It's just that we have to reroute traffic through those other streets," Nebgen said.
Eastbound McArdle Road traffic will need to detour onto Whitaker Drive and westbound traffic will be reduced to one lane.
Valve replacement will not affect the pipe upstream or downstream. Nebgen said any customers affected have been notified. He explained the the total time it takes to work on the service outage Friday depends on the excavation process.
"It'll be about a two-to-three-hour outage is what we're predicting, and it should occur on Friday," Nebgen said. "If we, if, if the job goes more quickly than what we're anticipating, the outage could be a little sooner than that."
These repairs also differ from the water line break earlier this year at Staples Street and McArdle Road. Nebgen said in that situation, the entire pipe was affected. Work being done this week between Whitaker Drive and Prince Drive only involves a broken valve.
He said Corpus Christi actively tracks the conditions of the pipes to better monitor when they need to be replaced. Nebgen said Corpus Christi Water works with the street department to determine the best time for pipe replacement when it is needed.
"We'll continue to operate the valve to make sure it continues to be maintained properly and then when it comes time to replace the pipe we work with the street department," Nebgen said.
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