Modernization and improvement projects to the City of Walker’s extensive natural gas system was the major topic of discussion at the regular monthly meeting of the City Council held on Monday, Jan. 9.

The in-depth examination of the gas system, a network that serves customers across a wide swath of Livingston Parish, was prompted, in part, by complaints from a small percentage of customers who lost gas pressure during the extreme cold spell that visited the region for three days in early January.

While only a few customers were affected by the lack of natural gas, at one point in the discussion Mayor Jimmy Watson said, “we take a lot of pride in our gas system and we want to serve every one of our customers at all times. If only one customers loses gas, that is one too many. We will continue to work toward assuring all of our customers always have gas available.”

The presentation on the status of the gas system was led by Brian Suberbielle, senior project manager for the SJB Group, LLC, the engineering firm that assists the city with its gas service. Suberbielle said the Walker system was built with little growth anticipated. He said the gas system was started in the late 1950s and 1960s and that by the end of 1999, the city had about 5,000 gas customers.

Over the next two decades the system added another 6,852 customer connections and by 2019, the city was serving almost 12,000 customers.

Suberbielle said that during the recent “polar vortex,” the extreme three days of cold weather, about 50-60 outages were recorded. “While one customer outage is not acceptable, our system delivers natural gas to more than 11,000 customers. These outages were in a general area which can be managed short term while we work on long term improvements,” he said.

During a discussion of pressure issues, Suberbielle said that the growth of system has exceeded anyone’s expectations for keeping up with demand. “Limited supply points and contractual restraints causing issues in receiving needed amounts of natural gas to adequately supply system demand are among the causes for low pressure issues,” he said.

Walker has already begun improvements to the system, Suberbielle explained, pointing out that after an audit in March of 2021 recommendations were made to conduct a system load study to determine piping deficiencies within the system. A study of four areas in the system, customers north of the city, the area south along the I-12 corridor, the mid-system between Walker and Watson, and the area west of the Watson-Live Oak area.

“We are working toward building a safe, reliable system to serve our customers’ needs for years to come. With all the recent growth in Livingston Parish, the City of walker has experienced tremendous growing pains,” Suberbielle observed.

He added that during the past year, the city has started several projects to help improve low pressure areas around Watson. “While these projects will not address all of our concerns, they are a start term solution until we can make major improvements to our infrastructure,” he said.

In the short term, Suberbielle, said, engineers and city gas system employees are studying several options including the possible use of portable liquefied natural gas tankers to help supplement gas supply into the system in the event such measures are deemed necessary.

Suberbielle then presented council members with a list of 11 improvement and extension projects that are scheduled for this fiscal year.

Jamie Etheridge, the city’s chief of staff, in introducing Suberbielle, said that during the recent bout of extreme cold weather, the city’s gas department, headed by Larry Williams, worked long hours assuring that the vast majority of the city’s thousands of customers continued to receive all the gas they could use.

Etheridge said that from time to time the city has to relocate gas lines when road and drainage projects are implemented. “When we have to move lines, what we have been doing is making those lines better for the future. For example, if we have to relocate a two-inch line, we install a four-inch line. This will improve capacity and pressure. Every time we have the opportunity to improve the system, we do so,” he said.

Etheridge said Williams and engineers working with the city will visit Houston next week to discuss the amount of gas that the city is receiving for its system. Watson said that the results of that meeting will be shared with the council.