Spring Projects: Call Before You Dig in Rockland, Orange

PEARL RIVER, NY — This spring’s most important piece of power equipment for everyone from construction contractors to municipal excavators and landscapers to homeowners isn’t a backhoe, auger, bulldozer or grader. The most important power tool is the telephone. Oh, and there's also an easy-to-remember, toll-free, one-stop number: 811.

That’s the nationwide One-Call Notification System’s phone number. 811 is the one number you call before you dig, say Orange & Rockland utility officials. Not just contractors, but homeowners too have an obligation to call.

Failure to call before digging results in more than 200,000 unintentional hits annually across the U.S., company officials said. Digging causes almost 60 percent of all accidental damage to underground natural gas pipelines.

Last year, O&R responded to 48,462 requests for mark-outs. There were nearly 80 damage incidents caused by dig-ins across O&R service territory last year alone.

That's why one of the utility company's chief safety concerns in the operation of its natural gas system is damage to its underground equipment. Most of that damage comes from excavators who fail to request appropriate utility ground markings to guide them safely past that equipment.

You know those marking — the spray paint on the ground or on the road, and those little color-coded flags — those show the location of gas mains and service lines and other underground facilities.

One toll-free call to the utility notification service at 811 can help to get an excavation project safely underway. The utility notification service contacts O&R and the company will mark the location of its underground electric and gas facilities at no charge. The 811 service also will notify other utilities (telephone, cable, sewer and water) to mark their facilities as well.

Contractors, excavators, landscapers and homeowners must call 811 at least two to 10 working days before the project is due to begin.

Section 765a of the New York State General Business Law Article 36, calls for a fine of up to $2,500 for the first excavator violation and, if the same excavator damages underground facilities a second time within the same 12 months, the fine can be as high as $10,000.

If you see an active excavation site or digging project, but you don’t see flags or painted markings, please call O&R at 1-877-434-4100 and report the location.

If you smell gas, immediately leave the area and call 911, O&R’s Gas Emergency Hotline at 1-800-533-LEAK (1-800-533-5325), or your local gas utility. You can report gas leaks anonymously.

For more details about working safely around O&R’s underground and overhead equipment, see our Web site at www.oru.com. For more information about the 811 One-Call Notification System, visit the www.call811.com website.

PHOTO: Doug Goddard, left, from the construction firm Ray S. Pantel, Inc., gets some guidance from O&R’s Steve Nostro, right, about mark out flags and paint that show the location of underground utility equipment at Route 303 and Erie St. in Blauvelt during a road improvement project there in 2015.