WHAT GIVES: A shocking discovery

Protecting yourself while digging not as simple as a single call

By Greg Harton

Posted: August 23, 2009 at 5:54 a.m.

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Have you seen through the years the commercials for Arkansas One Call?

Arkansas One Call for nearly 30 years has been the statewide organization that property owners have been encouraged to call, and contractors have been mandated by law to call, before any digging.

"Call before you dig," is the slogan, and Arkansans have been conditioned to believe that one simple phone call (dialing 811 or 1-800-482-8998) will prompt a response by utilities to mark underground service lines and insulate diggers from lurking underground dangers.

But what you don't know could kill you.

I recently started a home improvement project. We called Arkansas One Call, and within a couple of days the utilities each came out and marked the ground with paint indicating where the underground lines were.

So the digging began. Within a few hours, the power to my house was cut. The backhoe had sliced straight through the underground line that brings Southwestern Electric Power Co. electricity to our house. It was not marked.

Now, we would have had to move the line in any scenario because the addition to my house is going right on top of its route. But it bothered me that the magical call to Arkansas One Call hadn't protected me or the contractors out there digging.

I mean, just its very name suggests that all Arkansans need to worry about is making that one call, right?

But what I've learned through this process is that Arkansas One Call, while it's marketed as a safety measure designed to keep individuals from getting electrocuted or otherwise harmed, is really more about ensuring that utility company's equipment isn't damaged.

SWEPCO says it only marks underground "facilities" that it owns, and the lines from its underground facility to individual homes are owned by homeowners. This is not true for overhead power lines. We all learned clearly during January's ice storm that SWEPCO takes responsibility for the residential service line from the pole to the meter on the house, but any damage beyond that is the homeowner's responsibility.

So, the utility takes care of the power line that's clearly visible and easily accessible. The underground service line - in many cases installed decades before the current homeowner even bought the property and for which the homeowner arguably needs more help discerning - is the homeowner's problem.

I'd be OK with that if SWEPCO didn't run television commercials showing a homeowner about to dig in his yard being stopped by his ever-so-insightful wife who warns that he needs to call Arkansas One Call to be safe.

Kristin Bryant, the general manager of Arkansas One Call, said her organization has heard complaints about the SWEPCO commercial on two points - the commercial makes it appear that the response to calling Arkansas One Call is immediate, and it also creates the perception that digging after calling Arkansas One Call can be worry-free.

"That's not coming from us," Bryant said. "We're not advertising. That's the utility company that's sending that message out."

Bryant said Arkansas One Call serves only as a convenient notification center to let the utilities know underground facilities need to be marked. Utilities have up to two days to respond. Individual utilities make their own policies about the extent to which they mark underground lines.

"Some will mark all the way to the house," Bryant said.

And that would be a lot safer, especially for homeowners who rarely have a need to navigate or understand the nuances of utility companies' policies.

Instead, it appears Arkansas One Call and SWEPCO rely on disclaimers that protect them. Arkansas One Call, which operates on behalf of 807 utilities in Arkansas, says it will transfer homeowners who call to a prepared message that warns that nonmember utilities' lines and residential service lines may exist and that contacting a local electrical or plumbing contractor may be helpful.

Peter Main, a spokesman for SWEPCO, said bill inserts and a paragraph on the utility's Web site make it clear that the company marks only lines owned by the company and that SWEPCO customers own the underground electric services on their property. I found that disclaimer after beginning research to understand the complexities of utility line location in the wake of my cut power line and after I began to understand that the much-marketed simplicity of making one call represented a falsehood.

I would venture a guess that most customers pay little attention to bill inserts. One only begins to concern himself with buried lines when he's beginning a project.

But the marketed, utility-backed Arkansas One Call message is simple and clear: Call before you dig and you'll be protected.

One can argue that the utility and Arkansas One Call are being completely reasonable by disclaiming any responsibility for helping to locate the underground power lines that, in my view, are the ones homeowners are likely to strike by accident.

But in the context of their marketing of Arkansas One Call as a simple, one-step process for protecting Arkansans, those disclaimers ring hollow. If they're going to run those advertisements, they should make every effort to protect the safety of people digging.

Safety could be improved even if SWEPCO just went the extra step of communicating their policy - and the fact that it's likely an unmarked residential line exists somewhere in the homeowner's yard - directly to the homeowners whose yards are being marked rather than just relying on generic bill inserts and one paragraph on a Web site.

Arkansas Public Services Commission Executive Director John Bethel began looking into this Friday when I called to inquire about these policies. He said he's begun working with Arkansas One Call and SWEPCO to develop a door hanger or other device to communicate directly to property owners who call Arkansas One Call that the system is limited to utility-owned lines. That would help.

It still makes sense for every homeowner who is going to dig to call Arkansas One Call. It no doubt reduces the odds that one will cut into a dangerous utility line, but the policies of the utilities leave uncertainty well beyond the perception they've created through marketing.

As a property owner digging in my yard, I'll be just as dead if I hit any underground electrical line, whether it's one the utility owns or not. So, don't let cutesy commercials lure you into any sense of security. Let the digger beware.

Greg Harton is editor of the Northwest Arkansas Times. His column appears on Sunday.

Opinion, Pages 4 on 08/23/2009

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