Call Before You Dig

Call 811 Before You Dig.

Call before you dig. It’s the law!

If you’re plan­ning any land­scap­ing, gar­den­ing or oth­er dig­ging, add this to your chore list: Call before you dig. One call to 811 gives local util­i­ties like the PUD the chance to iden­ti­fy where their under­ground ser­vices are buried so you can dig safe­ly.

The Util­i­ty Noti­fi­ca­tion Cen­ter is the one-call agency ded­i­cat­ed to safe­guard­ing cit­i­zens and con­struc­tion per­son­nel who work around util­i­ties, as well as safe­guard­ing the under­ground infra­struc­ture of pipes, mains and lines which bring util­i­ties to your com­mu­ni­ty.

Call­ing before begin­ning any exca­va­tion pre­vents dam­age to under­ground facil­i­ties, ser­vice inter­rup­tions bod­i­ly injury.

The Util­i­ty Noti­fi­ca­tion Cen­ter is open 24 hours a day, every day, and accepts calls from con­trac­tors, home­own­ers, or any­one plan­ning to dig in Wash­ing­ton. Call­ing before you dig ensures that any pub­licly owned under­ground facil­i­ties will be marked accord­ing to the APWA col­or code so that you can dig safe­ly.

How does the service work?

Call 1–800-424‑5555, or 811, two work­ing days before you plan to begin your exca­va­tion work. The ser­vice is free and they will noti­fy the PUD and oth­er util­i­ties as well. Each util­i­ty will send some­one out to mark their buried lines. Each year we receive more than 1,300 ser­vice loca­tion requests, coun­ty-wide. The locat­ing ser­vice will ask a few sim­ple ques­tions:

  • The loca­tion of the site where you plan to dig. A street address and spe­cif­ic direc­tions help. So does mark­ing the site with white spray paint; that way we know exact­ly where you will dig.
  • The type of work you plan.
  • The date you plan to begin.

If there are buried lines on the site, each util­i­ty will mark their ser­vices with spray paint (red for elec­tric ser­vice, yel­low for gas or oil, blue for water, green for sew­er, and orange for tele­phone, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and cable TV).

With­in two feet of the spray-paint­ed marks, take spe­cial care and dig by hand.

If you do your home­work by call­ing before you dig, you can pro­ceed with con­fi­dence. You won’t endan­ger your life, and you won’t incur the costs of acci­den­tal­ly dig­ging into buried ser­vices. And that can be a lot – up to triple dam­ages, accord­ing to Wash­ing­ton law.

Work safely this season. Remember to call before you dig.