Once every two to three years, APGA staff leadership undertakes a two-week road trip to meet both members and non-members in the Southeast—also known as, given that the college football season is almost upon us, SEC territory. This year’s group was made up of Bert Kalisch, APGA’s President & CEO, Dave Schryver, APGA’s Executive Vice President, and Erin Kurilla, APGA’s Vice President of Operations & Pipeline Safety. This year we are going to try something new, which is that Erin and I are going to take turns writing about our meetings with members and travels along the way.
We have now done several Southeast tours and while the format of the trip is usually the same—a 90-minute presentation from APGA staff and a lunch followed by a roundtable discussion—every stop is different as we get to see old friends while making new ones. Many of APGA’s members are from small gas systems, which often makes it hard for them to travel to APGA events. This Southeast tour plays a critical role in allowing us to meet APGA members who don’t often travel to our events and learn of the challenges and issues they are facing within their gas system. It also provides us the opportunity to communicate firsthand the issues that APGA is working on and get their thoughts on what additional steps we can take to be of service to them.
The first stop of the road trip was on Monday, August 20 in Tifton, Ga., at the University of Georgia, Tifton Campus Conference Center. On an interesting side note, I learned that Tifton used to be the home of the world’s second largest magnolia tree. Unfortunately, the tree was damaged in a fire in 2004.
The meeting, which was hosted by Chris Strippelhoff from the Municipal Gas Authority of Georgia, was very well attended by representatives of numerous public gas systems in the south central Georgia region. After discussing APGA’s activities, we had a discussion over lunch regarding some of the challenges the systems were facing.
With our trip to Tifton now behind us, we are off to Destin! At the end of this trip we will have put over 2,000 miles on the car (and hopefully no more than 5 pounds on me…).
Below are some pictures of our day!
