Under existing law, as part of the Underground Damage Prevention Program, an operator of an underground utility facility must respond to a request to locate the facility for design or surveying purposes within a minimum time frame using specific methods. This bill would remove providing locate requestors with a description of the underground facilities and allowing these requestors to view facility records from those methods by which operators may respond to locate requests. This bill would require operators to complete locate requests that have not been completed within 20 calendar days of being submitted to the One-Call Notification System before completing any other locate request or other marking of facilties. This bill would make operators liable for any costs incurred by a requestor due to project delay because a locate request remains incomplete 30 calendar days or more after being submitted to the system. This bill would prohibit a contract locator from closing a locate request for purposes of the system. This bill would also prohibit an operator from closing a locate request for purposes of the system unless the operator has field-verified that the facility has been marked.

Statutes affected:
Introduced: 37-15-4