Member Profiles: Everly, Iowa

Dotting the mid-west are many small towns, outliers of larger communities. The kind of place that is distinguished only by looking just like many, many other towns. One such town is Everly, Iowa, where 650 people live, mostly to commute eight miles to the much larger city of Spenser. Historically, not much happened here. The biggest claim to fame is that Bonnie and Clyde robbed a bank here, long ago.

But, underneath its quiet streets lurk the pipes of the Everly Municipal Gas Utility, a system started in January 1994 after an Aquilla Pipeline system was municipalized. After a seven year effort to get municipalization through court, since, as Manager Bruce Harden says, “it is kind of hard to buy something someone doesn’t want to sell.” IAMU was working with the town to get the gas system Municipalization done, and Bruce’s hiring was one of the last pieces to the puzzle. Mr. Harden had worked as field superintendent for a municipal utility down by Cedar Rapids for several years before coming to Everly.

The system, which also handles the municipal water and sewer system, does so with a staff of two people in the field and two back in the office. There are 335 customers, mostly residential, using 50 MCF a/ year. Only five properties in the city limits are not served by natural gas. Currently, there is one major customer, a co-op for grain drying in fall that uses as much gas by itself as the rest of the system does the rest of the year. Everly’s supplier had to change their rate structure to fit a system that didn’t have a winter peak.

However, as of this writing, things could grow rapidly. Mr. Harden says, Everly is “currently one of two candidates for a new ethanol plant, which would increase our annual use by 87 times! Every four days, we would use as much gas as the whole system uses in a year.” They should know by the end of May if this will happen.

During the post-Katrina price increases Everly had some cash reserves to work with, which blunted the impact on customers somewhat. Also, the Everly Utility Board (which oversees the gas system and will oversee the electric system once that is municipalized) teamed up with the Everly City Council to forgive thirty-three dollars of the charges to all customers for gas, water and sewer for December 2005 through February 2006.

Everly is a member of the National Public Gas Association buying group, which is comprised of seventeen municipal gas utilities in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin. Each member utility has a seat on the Board of Directors, which set rates and a level gas purchasing plan. They buy a certain amount per month, which levels the price spikes and allows the member utilities to stay competitive.

In the last five years, Everly has been increasingly active in APGA participation, as a reaction to all the changes in the regulatory system and cost of gas, and what APGA has done to address these issues. “Since we only have two people on staff, we have no time or resources to keep up on regulatory systems.” The most valuable thing APGA has provided has been representation in Washington to the Congress and FERC. Closer to home, Everly has been working in partnership with APGA (and IAMU) on workshops. Never seem to have a problem with APGA staff coming in, for example, APGA’s John Erickson was scheduled to come speak on Public Awareness as of this writing.

Bert asked Bruce to be on APGA’s small system task force, which has had one conference call to date. IAMU has all Iowa munis in email; Bruce will be receiving emails from them all.

Originally in May 4, 2006 Public Gas News