Before You Dig
Important Information About Underground Utilities
The first tool to use is your telephone. Whether you plan on digging with a shovel, backhoe or earthmover, call the statewide One Call System number below at least two and a half working days before you begin digging. We’ll locate and mark our gas lines for you at no charge. Natural gas is one of the safest forms of energy. With your help, we can keep it that way.
Where It Starts
Safe digging starts when you call your local utilities prevention center. You should call about one week prior to when you will be digging. Your request to have all the underground utilities located in the proposed area of excavation will be taken and processed. This call should take only a few minutes if all the pertinent information is provided.
Be Watchful
If you notice someone digging on your property, be sure they have contacted the local utilities prevention center for a dig ticket and the utilities within that area are marked before any digging starts. This is for your own safety.
The Process
A process starts once the ticket is sent out to the utility members in your city. Once the utility members have been notified, then they will have 48 hrs from the next business day to get the locate request ticket marked and/or responded to. A final check for a “positive response” should be done at noon on the legal date you were told. If there are any problems, conflicts, or disputes with responses, call your local utilities preventtion center again to re-notify the utility members again.
What's Covered?
The dig ticket (locate request) in which you call in is intended to prevent any harm to your life and property. Among the worktypes that we suggest you call in a ticket for include: planting, repairing or replacing utilities (please specifying which utility), fences, mailbox, retaining walls, aerating, sentricon, grading, tilling, using an auger, any mechanized or motorized piece of machinery, etc.
How You Can Help?
We appreciate your assistance by participating in our Damage Prevention Program. By calling your local utility prevention center, you can help us to receive notice when grading, drilling, blasting, or excavation is being done in our specific pipeline area. This area includes parts of Stephens, Franklin, Hart, Rabun, Elbert, and Habersham counties in Georgia, plus Macon County in North Carolina.
Consequences
By not calling, here's what you could get into: Personal injury (possible loss of life), Damage to environment, costly property damage, damage to important utilities that would disable others to make emergency calls or lose the availability of a utility, costly delays, expensive repairs, legal problems, and civil penalties.
Georgia One-Call Center
Phone Number: 800-282-7411
North Carolina One-Call Center
Phone Number: 800-632-4949
The Office of Pipeline Safety and the Georgia Public Service Commission require that all natural gas systems operating under their jurisdiction participate in a “Damage Prevention Program.”
