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USDA Rural Development Assists with Natural Gas Project in Weakley County

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HUNTINGDON (May 15) — West Tennessee Public Utilities and USDA Rural Development announced a major expansion of natural gas lines in Weakley County to serve the area of Dukedom. The announcement was made at WTPU’s main offices in Huntingdon.
The natural gas will serve 200 households and 720 chicken houses, independent production facilities for Tyson Foods in Union City. Tyson is expanding its weekly processing of chickens from 600,000 to 1.2 million.
WTPU serves Carroll, Benton, Weakley and Henderson counties, and a portion of Henry with natural gas. The over $8 million project is facilitated with a low-interest USDA loan in the amount of $8.235 million and $1 million cash provided by the utility. The project requires 17 miles of high pressure steel pipe plus 25 miles of low-pressure plastic. It originates in Dresden.
Brent Dillahunty, general manager of WTPU said the utility company is served by two major cross-country pipelines. Redundancy of the two companies helps WTPU maintain its reliability and pricing. The major pipeline taps are in Scotts Hill and Gleason. Each chicken barn must be maintained at 95 degrees. The owners of the barns will save tens of thousands of dollars as compared with heating with propane.

Jim Tracy, director of the USDA Rural Development, said the federal agency is proud to work with local entities to improve the economic development of the area. The Weakley County project is a public/private partnership. Tracy said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue’s number one goal is economic development in the rural areas.
Joel Howard, USDA area manager, said WTPU is the largest utility his agency works with. He thanked the WTPU’s local leadership for developing the project.
Dillahunty said the Weakley County project is 90 percent complete and is under the day-to-day supervision of Mike Stafford. WTPU’s next major project is in south Carroll County.
Tyson is also adding a production facility in Humboldt. Chicken growing houses are being erected in the New Zion area between McKenzie and Trezevant, plus Clarksburg and Little Grove area.

USDA, Development, Weakley, Natural Gas, 2019