The Town of Duck Hill is about to serve a portion of the town that previously had been served by Atmos Energy.
“Duck Hill has filed a petition with the public service commission to be granted permission to serve that area with natural gas,” said Duck Hill Attorney Adam Kirk in an interview. “Currently, no utility has rights to most of the area; Atmos has rights to a small part of it, but they’re abandoning it to Duck Hill.”
“Atmos is going to file a petition to abandon the parts [of property] that [Duck Hill] is going to take in, and then [Atmos] is going to ask to expand—which is totally outside of our area—and [Duck Hill] is going to try to file our amended petition along with [Atmos’] so [the petitions will] all be tracking on the same time,” said Kirk in a December meeting, “Basically, to say yes, [Atmos] is giving us [specific areas of property], we’re agreeing to let them have [other areas] that [are out of Duck Hill town limits].”
In the most recent Board of Aldermen meeting, Kirk updated city aldermen again. “According to what Mr. Joe [Sutherland] and I have been told, we believe it will pass straight through once we get it straight. The last time we initially filed this thing, Atmos had actually gained some ground in areas that we were operating in too, and we didn’t know it because they didn’t file their certificates to cover those areas, or they’re not online or on the maps,” Kirk said at the January meeting.
Kirk said that the city would be gaining “about 1,240 acres” from the area that will be abandoned by Atmos Energy. He recommended hiring a full-time operator for the city gas system, saying “it’s big as it is, but it’s about to get a lot bigger.”
He also talked about a subdivision in the Duck Hill area that was hoping to be added to the Duck Hill gas system.
City Clerk Lasonja Sizemore informed him that she’s already put out advertisements for the full-time position, and Sutherland suggested that she widen her search statewide.
