Member Profiles: Woodbine, IA

Forty miles north of Omaha, Nebraska lies the small community of Woodbine, Iowa. It is most notable for containing the largest remaining original bricked portion of the first transcontinental highway, U.S. Highway 30 (the Lincoln Highway) from 1921 as part of its main street. It also contains the plant where Tommy Lift Gates for trucks are manufactured.

Underneath the streets are the pipes of the Woodbine Municipal Natural Gas System, started from scratch in 1962, and now serving 544 residential and 92 commercial/light industrial customers. Overseeing this system is Superintendent Paul Marshall, a 33-year veteran of the gas system. The three employees of the system not only do gas, but also wastewater, park maintenance, street sanding and sweeping and storm water. “We are really good at multitasking,” jokes Mr. Marshall. This situation is not uncommon to systems in Iowa. He looks at it as being like a fireman waiting for a fire call, “except we are waiting for a gas emergency while riding a mower.” If there were no gas system, the city would still be spending for employees to do their other tasks anyway. With this arrangement, the city is getting twice the work.

Mr. Marshall has a lot of contact with the people served byWoodbine Municipal Gas, and actually knows a lot of his customers on a first-name basis. The system is averaging between 68000-70000 MCF per year. In the early 1990s, the utility had a program to replace inefficient furnaces in town by offering interest free five-year loans. This succeeded in replacing nearly 80% of the furnaces in town with modern 90% effificient models. This program went so well, they started replacing fireplaces, gas grills, water heaters and other gas products.

To deal with the uncertain gas supply price situation, Woodbine joined a gas buying consortium of 35 public gas systems in Iowa, Nebraska, and Minnesota, which hired someone to do the buying for them under the name of Clayton Energy Corporation. The municipal gas system in Manning, IA formed this organization with four other utilities. Woodbine joined after it was going for three years, when Woodbine’s supply contracts ran out with Aquilla. Clayton Energy works with independent producers in Texas.

According to Mr. Marshall, “it has worked out great. With 35 utilities involved, there is a wealth of expertise and experience when they get together to decide when and how much to buy. We beat the NYMEX most of the time!” He is very happy with this arrangement, since it has saved thousands of dollars over the years. They are now looking to pre-buy some gas three years in advance.

Main Street's original bricks during the winter.

Mr. Marshall believes that “having gas on the Board of Trade is one of the biggest mistakes ever, and it is making residential customers poor. They must have known the price would go up. By adding another layer of people to the process, there is no way it couldn’t have increased.”

As for involvement in APGA, Mr. Marshall has been there since 1973, and Woodbine was a member since well before then. Since they are what Mr. Marshall describes as “a small fish in a big pond in the middle of country,” they depend on APGA to be their voice in Washington, DC. This is their number one reason for being in APGA. “As long as regulators and legislators will continue to do things Woodbine has to do something about, which will probably never end, we will be part of APGA.” The Operational work and Public Awareness work has also been good for them. They will be using the APGA GOAL program, since they are “busy mowing, so there is no time to call our customers!”

Originally in April 3, 2006 Public Gas News