Call Before You Dig

Call 811 or go to Georgia811.com

Call­ing before you dig will keep you out of trou­ble with the law. Besides, who wants their neigh­bors mad at them because they caused a pow­er out­age when they dug a hole to plant a tree?

The Geor­gia Util­i­ties Pro­tec­tion Cen­ter (UPC) pro­vides a sin­gle point of con­tact for the pre­ven­tion of dam­age to under­ground util­i­ty facil­i­ties, and to pro­tect the pub­lic and con­struc­tion con­trac­tors from con­tact with pow­er and gas lines. Geor­gia law requires that any­one dig­ging in Geor­gia must con­tact UPC at least three days before con­struc­tion begins. Util­i­ties are required to locate all under­ground facil­i­ties in the con­struc­tion area by the end of the sec­ond busi­ness day after a locate request is made. The loca­tion of util­i­ties will be marked to pre­vent acci­den­tal con­tact. UPC can be reached sim­ply by dial­ing 811 or going to Georgia811.com

Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive will assist mem­bers in locat­ing under­ground elec­tri­cal facil­i­ties if con­struc­tion will take place near the marked facil­i­ties.

Doing some work over­head?

Geor­gia law fur­ther requires that any­one per­form­ing any work with­in 10 feet of over­head high-volt­age elec­tric pow­er lines noti­fy the UPC dur­ing its reg­u­lar busi­ness hours at least 72 hours, exclud­ing week­ends and hol­i­days, pri­or to begin­ning such work. Noti­fi­ca­tion allows the own­er or oper­a­tor of the pow­er lines to take appro­pri­ate safe­ty mea­sures to pre­vent injury to per­sons and prop­er­ty and inter­rup­tions of util­i­ty ser­vice result­ing from acci­den­tal or inad­ver­tent con­tact with high-volt­age elec­tric lines.