TITLE 55

PROPERTY IN GENERAL

CHAPTER 22

UNDERGROUND FACILITIES DAMAGE PREVENTION

55-2202.  Definitions. As used in this chapter:

(1)  "Administrator" means the administrator of the division of occupational and professional licenses.

(2)  "Board" means the damage prevention board.

(3)  "Business day" means any day other than Saturday, Sunday, or a legal, local, state, or federal holiday.

(4)  "Damage" means any impact or exposure that results in the substantial weakening of structural or lateral support of an underground facility, or the penetration, impairment, or destruction of any underground protective coating, housing, or other protective device, or the partial or complete destruction of the facility, or the severance, partial or complete, of any underground facility to the extent that the project owner or the affected underground facility owner determines that repairs are required.

(5)  "Emergency" means any sudden or unforeseen condition that compels immediate action to prevent or resolve:

(a)  A clear and present danger to life, health, or property;

(b)  An unplanned customer service outage; or

(c)  The blockage of roads or transportation facilities.

(6)  "Emergency excavation" means an excavation performed in response to an emergency.

(7)  "End user" means any customer or consumer of any utility service or commodity provided by an underground facility owner.

(8)  "Excavation" means any operation in which earth, rock, or other material in the ground is moved or otherwise displaced by any means including, but not limited to, explosives.

(9)  "Excavator" means any person who engages directly in excavation.

(10) "Excavator downtime" means lost time for an excavation project due to failure of one (1) or more stakeholders to comply with applicable damage prevention regulations.

(11) "Hand digging" means any excavation involving nonmechanized tools or equipment that when used properly will not damage underground facilities. Hand digging includes, but is not limited to, hand shovel digging, manual posthole digging, vacuum excavation, and soft digging.

(12) "Identified but unlocatable underground facility" means an underground facility that has been identified but cannot be located with reasonable accuracy.

(13) "Identified facility" means any underground facility that is indicated in the project plans as being located within the area of proposed excavation.

(14) "Locatable underground facility" means an underground facility that can be field-marked with reasonable accuracy.

(15) "Locator" means a person who identifies and marks the location of an underground facility owned or operated by an underground facility owner.

(16) "Marking" means the use of stakes, paint, or other clearly identifiable materials to show the field location of underground facilities, in accordance with the current color code standard of the American public works association. Markings shall include identification letters indicating the specific type of the underground facility.

(17) "Notice of emergency excavation" means an excavator call to a one-number notification service not less than two (2) hours prior to commencing the emergency excavation to provide a description of the emergency, the location of the emergency excavation area, contact information for an individual with the excavator who may be reached throughout the emergency, and expected time and date of the emergency excavation.

(18) "One-number notification service" means a service through which a person can notify owners of underground facilities and request field-marking of their underground facilities.

(19) "Person" means an individual, partnership, association, corporation, a state, a city, a county, or any subdivision or instrumentality of a state, and its employees, agents, or legal representatives.

(20) "Public right-of-way" means the area on, below, or above a public roadway, highway, street, lane, path, sidewalk, alley, or other right-of-way dedicated for compatible uses.

(21) "Reasonable accuracy" or "reasonably accurate" means location within twenty-four (24) inches horizontally of the outside dimensions of each side of an underground facility.

(22) "Rural underground facility owner" means an underground facility owner that is a public utility or a member-owned cooperative that serves fewer than five thousand (5,000) total customers in a county or counties with populations that do not exceed fifty thousand (50,000) people.

(23) "Service lateral" means any underground facility located in a public right-of-way or underground facility easement that is used to convey water (unless being delivered primarily for irrigation), stormwater, or sewage and connects an end user’s building or property to an underground facility owner’s main utility line.

(24) "Soft digging" means any excavation using tools or equipment that utilize air or water pressure as the direct means to break up soil or earth for removal by vacuum excavation.

(25) "Stakeholder" means any party with an interest in protecting underground facilities including, but not limited to, persons, property owners, underground facility owners, excavators, contractors, cities, counties, highway districts, railroads, public entities that deliver irrigation water and those engaged in agriculture.

(26) "Underground facility" means any item buried or placed belowground for use in connection with the storage or conveyance of water (unless being delivered primarily for irrigation), stormwater, sewage, electronic, telephonic or telegraphic communications, cable television, electric energy, petroleum products, gas, gaseous vapors, hazardous liquids, or other substances and includes but is not limited to pipes, sewers, conduits, cables, valves, lines, wires, manholes, attachments, and those parts of poles or anchors belowground.

(27) "Underground facility easement" means a nonpossessory right to operate, control, bury, install, maintain, or access an underground facility.

(28) "Underground facility owner" means any person who owns or operates an underground facility or who provides any utility service or commodity to an end user via an underground facility.

History:

[55-2202, added 1990, ch. 351, sec. 1, p. 940; am. 1991, ch. 170, sec. 1, p. 409; am. 2016, ch. 325, sec. 2, p. 895; am. 2019, ch. 182, sec. 1, p. 587; am. 2019, ch. 256, sec. 1, p. 764; am. 2020, ch. 82, sec. 35, p. 205; am. 2023, ch. 15, sec. 74, p. 115; am. 2023, ch. 191, sec. 1, p. 521.]