Call 811 before digging
Indiana utilities are reminding homeowners to call 811 before any digging project as part of National Safe Digging Month — it’s an easy step that prevents accidentally hitting buried gas, electric, or telecom lines. (lpheralddispatch.com) If your spring to‑do list includes landscaping or fence posts, making the call is free and can save big headaches and costs. (lpheralddispatch.com)
A lot of spring digging accidents start with a job that looks too small to be dangerous: one mailbox, one shrub, one fence post. In Indiana, the legal first step is still the same for all of them: contact 811 at least two full working days before you dig. (indiana811.org) That rule exists because the lines under a yard are not just gas pipes. Indiana 811 says electric, communications, water, sewer, and other buried utility lines can all sit below the same patch of grass where a homeowner plans to use a shovel or auger. (indiana811.org) The 811 system is basically a switchboard for buried infrastructure. When a homeowner submits a ticket, Indiana 811 notifies the member utilities tied to that address so they can mark the approximate location of their lines before the project starts. (indiana811.org) Indiana’s timing rule is more specific than most people realize. A request has to be made at least two full working days before digging, and a “working day” does not include Saturday, Sunday, or state and national legal holidays. (indiana811.org) The markings are not decoration. Indiana 811 says homeowners should leave the paint and flags in place for the whole project, and if the marks fade or get disturbed, the site has to be remarked before digging continues. (indiana811.org) The service is free, which is why utilities keep repeating the message every April during National Safe Digging Month. Indiana 811’s own campaign materials frame April as the annual push to remind homeowners and contractors before the busiest landscaping and fence-building season begins. (indiana811.org) The national data show why the reminders keep coming back. Common Ground Alliance said its 2024 damage report logged 196,977 unique reported damages across the United States and Canada, and the overall trend was still slightly worse than the year before. (commongroundalliance.com, dirt.commongroundalliance.com) Homeowners are a known weak spot in that system. In a March 28, 2024 survey released for National Safe Digging Month, Common Ground Alliance said 26.9 million Americans planning do-it-yourself digging projects expected to skip contacting 811 first. (commongroundalliance.com) Indiana’s law does not treat “small project” as an exception. Indiana 811 says all digging projects, big or small, require a ticket, and the state law behind that rule is Indiana Code 8-1-26. (indiana811.org, indiana811.org) So the real spring checklist item is not the shovel. It is the ticket number Indiana 811 gives you after the request, because that starts the clock for utilities to mark what is buried before a routine backyard job turns into a broken cable, a neighborhood outage, or a gas emergency. (indiana811.org, indiana811.org)
