Call 811 before digging for landscaping projects

With the onset of spring and summer’s warmer weather, many homeowners and landscape professionals across the country will roll up their sleeves and reach for their shovels to start projects that require digging this season.

The Common Ground Alliance, the association dedicated to protecting underground utilities and the people who dig near them, reminds homeowners and professional diggers that calling 811 is the first step toward protecting you and your community from the risk of unintentionally damaging an underground line.

Every digging project, no matter how large or small, warrants a free call to 811. Installing 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 collected by the Common Ground Alliance in a phone survey in March, millions of American homeowners will likely undertake do-it-yourself projects involving digging this year — and 44 percent of those DIYers do not plan to make a free call to 811 before digging. Extrapolated to the full population of U.S. homeowners, that means that approximately 58.5 million people will dig this year without first calling 811.

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 location of buried utilities in their area. Unintentionally striking one of these lines can result in inconvenient outages for entire neighborhoods, serious harm to