And we have one interesting topic.

Or two.

One topic, and I'll turn it right over to Morgan Whalen.

She's director of government affairs with Virginia Natural Gas.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mr.

Mayor, members of Council, Mr.

Manager.

At Mr.

Price said, my name is Morgan Wayland.

I'm the director of government affairs for Virginia Natural Gas.

And thank you so much for your time this evening.

The last time I had the pleasure of being in front of you was over a land rezoning for Virginia Natural Gas' new operations headquarters that'll be located off of Clearviewed Avenue.

Happy to report that project is moving forward.

We're continuing in the design and uh look forward to breaking ground on that project in 2025, and we'll make sure to keep you posted on that as that moves forward.

Um but tonight I'm here to present on an infrastructure replacement project.

Um really think the uh city manager's team and the departments, and I think frankly, I think one of the reasons that we're here tonight is that this is going to be adjacent to City Hall, and it is and we know it's a high traffic corridor.

Uh, frankly, I hit some of that traffic uh today.

So we're gonna walk through the project, really explain what it is, what it isn't, and why it is needed to continue to ensure uh reliable energy uh for your residence businesses and um even uh energy for this building that we sit in today.

Um I'm joined uh tonight with a few of my colleagues in case we have any questions.

I'll introduce them briefly.

Um, Adam Wallace is the manager of construction for Virginia Natural Gas.

Um Amanda Bouchonville, she oversees this program's part of the Save program, overseas Save, and we have um Jonathan Sullivan with us, and he's an engineer on this project.

Apologies may not have this on.

So the next slide was really uh just a demonstration into my uh Virginia Natural Gas.

Um we are your local distribution company that serves a majority of Southeastern Virginia.

Um have some assets that are just on the string that kind of describe like who we are, who we serve.

Um so Chesapeake uh as a city is unique.

You actually are split in two.

You have two different uh gas service providers based on where you live.

So on the screen, the kind of darker beige area, that is the area that Virginia Natural Gas is the sole service provider.

Um, the lighter tan area that kind of splits Chesapeake and Suffolk, that is Columbia Gas of Virginia.

Um we are not competitors, we have our own service territory.

So if you live in Western Branch, your gas service provider is Columbia Gas of Virginia, and said if you live in uh Greenbrier area, Virginia Natural Gas is your service provider.

So it is um old systems that were then bought by different companies that have the system that we are today.

In Chesapeake's when I speak of numbers, we're speaking just of Virginia Natural Gas' customer count.

So we're very proud we have about 30,000 residential customers.

And if you think about an average typical average household size for the city of Chesapeake, that's over 84,000 people who use natural gas delivered by VNG to heat their homes in the wintertime, not on hot days like today, for cooking, for generators, or to dry their clothes.

We serve over 2,700 in commercial and industrial customers on this ranges in throughout the region, but specifically in Chesapeake, if you think about your schools, the city hall complex, the court complex, hospitals, small businesses, likely your favorite local restaurant, and we're very proud to serve this building.

At Virginia Natural Gas, we have multiple departments and divisions that work with the city on a daily basis, and we're really proud of that relationship and the ongoing collaboration with the city staff.

We have folks who work with your economic development team to ensure we have energy ready as you look for new business expansion or attraction.

I will say the new exciting announcement from today, unfortunately, it's not in our service territory, it's in Columbia Gases of Virginia, but very exciting announcement and was excited to read that for y'all earlier today.

And many of our employees have great relationships with your fire department and EOC.

Our folks are on call 24-7.

So just wanted to start with that little bit overview of who VNG is and the work we do every day.

But today here to talk about it's referred to as the steps to advance Virginia Energy Program.

This program was established by the Virginia General Assembly in 2010.

And Virginia is a national leader in ensuring the timely and accelerated replacement of existing infrastructure.

And this program that's that's what it is.

It is to accelerate the replacement of distribution lines.

So this is the lines that directly serve families, businesses in your community.

And this program, it's very it is a uh facts data-driven program.

We have a distribution and integrity management program that ranks our infrastructure, and we're constantly looking at what's the age of our infrastructure, when was it initially installed, what materials was it initially installed with, and we rank that annually, and then we identify what projects need to come next in the queue.

Um I'll show on a later slide, but Chesapeake is a uh we've done less of these projects in Chesapeake, and frankly, it's from the age of your city.

A lot of our infrastructure in Chesapeake is newer, so you haven't seen as much of this replacement as we have done, for example, in uh Norfolk or Hampton or Newport News, just through the age of their cities, and uh we had infrastructure there that was hundreds of years old.

Um there are some key components of this program.

Um again, it has to show that it reduces risk.

It has to be for only existing customers.

So when we replace this infrastructure, it cannot be used to serve a new business or a new development.

It is only for our current customers, and that is very clearly outlined in Virginia Code.