Friday, April 28, 2017
Know what’s below: Call 811 before digging for land- scaping and home improvement projects this spring
(BPT) - With the snow melted and the ground thawed, many eager homeowners and land- scape professionals across the country will roll up their sleeves and reach for their shovels to start projects that require dig- ging this spring.
During the transition
into “digging season,” Common Ground Alliance (CGA), the as- sociation dedicated to protecting underground utilities and the people who dig near them, re- minds homeowners and profes- sional diggers that calling 811 is the first step toward protecting you and your community from the risk of unintentionally dam- aging an underground line. Every digging project, no matter how large or small, war- rants a free call to 811. Install- ing a mailbox or fence, building a deck and landscaping are all examples of digging projects that should only begin a few days after making a call to 811. Calling this number connects you to your local one-call utility notification center.
According to data col-
lected by CGA in a phone survey in March, millions of American homeowners will likely do DIY projects involving digging this year, but 44 percent of them do not plan to make a free call to 811 before digging. Extrapolated to the full population of U.S. homeowners, approximately 58.5 million people will dig this year without first calling 811.
Page 17 Here’s how the 811 process works:
1. One free, simple phone call to 811 makes it easy for your local one-call center to notify all appropri- ate utility companies of your intent to dig. Call a few days prior to digging to ensure enough time for the approximate location of utility lines to be marked with flags or paint.
2. When you call 811, a representative from your local one-call center will ask for the location and descrip- tion of your digging project.
A utility line is damaged every six minutes in America because someone decided to dig without making a call to 811 to learn the approximate loca- tion of buried utilities in their area. Unintentionally striking one of these lines can result in inconvenient outages for entire neighborhoods, serious harm to yourself or your neighbors, and significant repair costs.
As a result, CGA offers the following tips to make sure you complete your project safely and without any utility service interruptions, so you don’t be- come a statistic.
There are nearly 20 mil-
lion miles of underground utility lines in the United States, which equates to more than a football field’s length of utilities for every person in the U.S. Your family depends on this buried in- frastructure for your everyday needs, including electric, natural gas, water and sewer, cable TV, high-speed internet and landline telephone. With that much criti- cal infrastructure underground, it’s important to know what’s be- low and call 811 before digging. To find out more infor-
mation about 811 or the one-call utility notification center in your area, visit
www.call811.com.
3. Your local one-call center will notify af- fected utility compa- nies, which will then send professional locators to the pro- posed dig site to mark the approximate loca- tion of your lines.
4. Only once all lines have been accurately marked should you roll up those sleeves and carefully dig around the marked areas.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38
