On August 20, APGA staff leadership, Bert Kalisch, President & CEO, Dave Schryver, Executive Vice President, and Erin Kurilla, Vice President for Operations & Safety, began a two-week Southeast Tour. The trip included 10 briefings with members in a variety of locations in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky and Alabama. The tour concluded on August 31. The format of the meetings was similar to the previous Southeast Tours APGA has undertaken in the past with APGA staff providing an approximately 90-minute overview of APGA activities that highlight specific advocacy and operational issues of importance to public natural gas systems such as pipeline safety and preserving and enhancing the direct-use of natural gas. Lunch was then provided and the meeting would conclude with a roundtable discussion of issues and challenges they are facing within their individual system, the state and the industry as a whole.
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 have the opportunity to attend association events and learn of the challenges they are facing and how APGA can be of greater service to them. During the 2,000 mile trip, Bert, Dave and Erin were able to have conversations with many members whose first interaction with APGA was this meeting!
This year APGA staff also wrote a daily blog about their trip. The blog can be viewed at
www.apga.org/southeasttour. For questions on this article, please contact Dave Schryver of APGA’s staff by phone at 202-464-2742 or by email at
dschryver@apga.org.