Mayor proclaims April Safe Digging Month

Across the nation, cities, excavaton industry and utility companies are promoting April as Safe Digging Month.
“Each year, Linden’s underground utility infrastructure is jeopardized by unintentional damage due to failures to call 811, the national call number to have underground lines located prior to digging,” City of Linden Mayor Clarence Burns said.
 If planning to dig, a free call to 811, will connect callers to an agent who will take all the informatin on where and when they will be digging. The individual must wait 48 hours, excluding holidays and weekends, to allow all underground facilities in the yard to be marked.
“Calling 811 provides professional excavators and homeowners a simple way to reach the Texas Excavation Notification System to request utility line locations at the intended dig site,” Burns said. “The City of Linden Council services the citizens of Linden at no cost to taxpayers, spreading the message that safe digging is a shared responsibility and encourages the residents of Linden to always call 811 before digging.”
Professional locators are sent to the requested digging site to mark the appropriate location of underground lines with flags or spray paint. Striking a single phone, cable, gas or electric underground line can cause injury, repair costs, fines and inconvenient outages.
“Undesired consequences such as service interruption, damage to the environment, personal injury and even death are the potential results,” Burns explained.
Every digging project, no matter how large of small, warrants a call to 811. Installing a mailbox, putting a fence, building a deck or laying a patio are all example of digging projects that need a call to 811 before starting.
“Failure to call before digging results in more than 250,000 unintentional hits annually nationwide and we do not want anyone’s project to become part of the statistic,” Dennis Quinn with CenterPoint Energy said.
 The depth of utility lines can vary for any number of reasons, such as erosion, previous digging projects and uneven surfaces. Utility lines need to be properly marked, because even when digging only a few inches, the risk of striking an underground utility line still exists.
City Administrator Robbie Hood ask residents inside the city to also call the city hall before digging so city workers can come out and properly locate local utility lines for water and sewer.
“Making a simple call to 811 in advance of any digging project, waiting the required amount of time, respecting the marked lines by maintaining visual definition throughout the course of the excavation and digging with care around the marks will save time and money,” Burns encouraged.
Visit www.call811.com for more information and the call-before-you-dig process.