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June 20, 2012Dig Safe Work Group Meeting

Members In Attendance: Dana Wardwell, Bob Burns, Kevin Murphy, Marc Levesque, Bruce Hubbard, Bruce Brown, Randy Gardner, Stan Grover, Kevin Ishihara, Dan Wells, Leonard Blanchette, Ben Sanborn, Kathleen Dumaine, Don Johnson, Alan Dow Carl Bisson, Sam Murray, Sharon Staz (on phone), Robert Finelli, Mark Turner, Greg Connors, and Richard Davies

Meeting started approximately 10:12 am with Dick Davies checking in to see who was on the telephone conference line. Sharon Staz was the only individual on the phone, she indicated that there had been another person prior to the line going dead.

Thanked everyone for attending, good to see a lot of you folks again. For folks who are new members of the Dig Safe Work Group this year, many of the members around the table who were on the group from last year as well, so I think there may be seven new members. Why don’t we go around the table and just introduce yourself very briefly and if you are a new member tell us a little bit about yourself, why you got involved in this process.

Dan Wells , Superintendent Winthrop Utilities DistrictRandy Gardner, owner of Gardner Construction of BangorBruce Hubbard, Vice President Enterprise Trenchless Technologies, Inc.

Dick – for those of you who got these little pods in front of you might want to pull those in – those are microphones – we are using them in part so that anybody who is listening in from away can hear but it also – we are going to be making a recording of this so that we have a record of meetings so speak into the microphone or at least close enough so that we can get them on the recorder so that it will be useful.

Leonard Blanchette, General Manager for Brunswick Sewer DistrictMark Turner, City of Waterville, Public Works DepartmentKevin Ishihara, Portland Water DistrictGreg Connors, Maine Municipal AssociationBen Sanborn, Maine Telecommunications Association of MaineSam Murray, Unitil (new member) took over damage prevention also project coordinator for

natural gasKathleen Dumaine, FairPoint Communications (also Executive Committee Chairman for Dig

Safe)Bob Finelli, Executive Director for Dig SafeStan Grover, member of the publicMarc Levesque, On Target Utility ServicesDon Johnson, TimeWarner Cable, Director of Construction New England (new member) believe

my boss Lance Boland was predecessor, no longer with the CompanyDana Wardwell, City of Bangor – Public WorksBruce Brown, Shaw Brothers (AGC of Maine)Bob Burns, Town of Gorham – Public Works Director (new member) picked through an MMA process I believeDick Davies, State’s Public Advocate, Legislative action, the Chair of the work group once again, I don’t know whether it is a good deed never go unpunished or what, but we are back again another go around.

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Let me first of all start by talking about the process we are going to use this time, for those who were around last time, we had a sort of free for all and it seemed to work out reasonably well. We are going to try a few things a little bit differently a little bit more focus on it. One of the things that we ran into a little bit of a problem on the last time around is we had a lot of recommendations that were proposed verbally. We tried to capture them on paper but we didn’t always capture them as well as might have and it ended up leading to few problems, especially when the Commission got some of our language for consideration as part of the rulemaking that they were required to do. So this time what I would like to do is that any recommendations that are going made, to be put together in writing and what we will do is we will have discussions at each of our meetings on a couple of selected topics. You can propose recommendations at any time but we would like to have you at least submit a rough draft of what you want to say. What we will than do is one of the staff members from the Public Utilities Commission who are here, Derek Davidson and Matt Kaply who are over here, they are going to be working with us. What we will do, we will try to put what you have proposed into a format that can fit either with the rules if it is a change in the rules, or the law if it is a change in the law. We will not try to editorialize on it, we just put it in a format that if it goes forward and is approved, than it is likely to fit with either the rules or the law that it is attempting to that any changes with. We will make any editorial suggestions and we will get it back to you. You have the final say of whether you are satisfied with that or not; but we do want to have at least an opportunity to put it in proper written form so that if it is acted on that we that are able to have it go smoothly as possible with those who have got it after we are finished it.

As those of you who are around last time around, will recall one of the provisions of the Legislature included in the law that created this Work Group as they did the last time, is a provision that any recommendation that is made and voted on here only goes forward if it receives at least 2/3 vote of the full membership and there are 23 members of the Work Group. So in the past we determined you need to have at least 15 votes in order to qualify for that 2/3 requirement. The value of that was that became very obvious; people who have been involved in previous discussions found that, often times, ideas came forward with fairly narrow level of support. Maybe 51/49 or so they often times ran into some difficulties, by having the 2/3 requirement it means that there is going to be much broader support within the Work Group to have some things go forward and that tends to reduce, but not entirely eliminate, the likelihood that there will opposition further along the line.

We are going to try to have meeting roughly once a month. Last time we kind of , we had a tight schedule because the PUC was going to have to a full blown rulemaking proceeding on any things that we voted out that required action on the rules so we needed to get it to them far enough in advance so that they could go through that process and still meet the deadline for the legislative session. This year while circumstances have not changed dramatically, the fact that recommendations that would be approved here this time would be going to the first session of the next Legislature which is a much longer time period, the Commission and I talked, and the thought was that, though they will still need to a rulemaking proceeding, we can wait a little bit longer for them start it because they could undertake it and have it done either by the end of year of early into 2013. So they have a little bit more time to do that, they are not under as great level of pressure, so we will try to spread the meetings out a little bit, create a less of problems with your schedule and as we do this time, we will try to get your feedback on what the best days are out of the next coming month. We will identify several dates and times; circulate them as we did the last time around. Based on the feedback we get from you we will try to select the date that seems to have the potential for getting the greatest amount of attendance. We actually have somewhat better attendance than what was indicated by the feedback we got and always glad to see more people able to be here. The work that we do is obviously better done when we have more people around the table to participate in that process. That is the run down on the technical things.


In your packet you’ll find a few items, some of which you have seen before. You have the agenda for today, you’ve got the appointees to this Work Group (names and addresses) on the yellow sheet, name tag so we can recognize who you are (especially for newer folks that we haven’t gotten familiar with) and lastly, we’ve got the copy of the law that created this Work Group.

For the new members before you leave today, I’ve got copies a Damage Prevent Training workbook that the Commission has put together. It is very useful compilation of a lot of provisions of the laws and rules and things, one difference in this one, this was produced before the latest rules were approved, so the version you have there is not the most up-to-date, but we will get you an up-to-date version. But otherwise the information in here is useful. If you are a returning member and would like to have a copy of this let us know we will get some additional ones, we have got enough here for the new members, but we will be glad to get additional copies for anybody who would like to have a copy of that yourself.

To get ourselves started, I asked the Staff at the Commission, particularly Matt Kaply to put together sort of a summary document on each of the issues that the Legislature assigned to us. While you will find it in the law, I am going to pass around a portion – what I am going to pass around is just those provisions that are just those duties of this work group extracted from the law, just so they are easier to work with, without flipping through several pages of law to try and find the right sections. This may make it a little bit easier to work with. So there are six items that the Legislature specifically directed us to examine, they will be on this sheet. I am going to ask Matt if he will talk a little bit about a couple of the issues.

Matt Kaply – Power Point Presentation incorporated


Matt Kaply ended his Power Point with asking if anyone had any questions and there were none.

Dick Davies went to the agenda discussing about taking up two of the topics. Thinking as I started to elaborate on a little earlier, that we will have discussions about specific issues you will know in advance the issues that we are going to have on the table, you can make recommendations during those discussions, you make them after those discussions, you hold the votes on those recommendations to a later time so there is an opportunity to put it in writing, to have us make sure that it fits within either the Law or the rule and to get it back to folks for them to take a look at it before they come to the meeting in which we will have the vote on those things so there will be plenty of time for everybody that is involved understand the issue and have a chance to frame it properly, make sure it fits into the law or the rules, look at what the language is before you are going to be asked to vote on it. And by having it meeting roughly a month apart allows for time for us to get things prepared for people’s considerations and we’ll probably as we did the last time we may take some straw polls on issues, we will hold the formal votes on any recommendations that are proposed to the latter part of our schedule. It may not be the final meeting but it will one the last couple of meetings that we will hold on that, so there is time for folks to consider these things. You will have – we will make every effort to have the written version that the sponsor of the resolution or recommendation has agreed to in your hands at least a week before any meeting in which they might be voting on. So you have time to think about it talk among yourselves. With the list you’ve got you’ve all got emails, phone abilities to contact other members of the Work Group to talk about this, I know a number of the Groups who nominated people have been very interested in those sort of things and may work with people to help craft the language of things and all those things are perfectly appropriate. We just want to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to see it and think about it, talk with other people about it before they are asked to take a vote on that.

There are two issues that we put on the agenda today. We think, in part because they may be ones that you can sort of get our minds around and while we scheduled, a three hour time period, we will tend to do that for all the meetings, if it takes us less time to complete our work we are not going to make you sit around and make you wait for that third hour to be completed. We will get out, though it may be very tempting today to look outside and say jeez it is almost 90 degrees why don’t we stay still 5:00 today, we won’t make you do any of those sort of things.

Two issues we have on the agenda today are one, Creating a new apportionment of the costs of membership in the damage prevention system so that members could pay a flat fee for each notification of pending excavation; the second one is – Developing a process for the commission to keep records of successful markings or excavations completed by members of the damage prevention system.

We will take them up in that order. I am going to start up on the first one. Bob Finneli who runs the Dig Safe System and who has been a member of our Dig Safe Work Group before and is currently involved, is going to talk about that at the same time I am going to pass around something that many of you have seen on the Dig Safe website and if not it is worth taking a look at. It gives you a little bit of background as you read through this it talks a little bit about Matt had run through principal members, general members, the way costs are allocated out by state but I thought it would be useful to have Bob go into that in a little bit greater detail. Bob you want to

Bob Finneli: No problem. What everybody has to realize is that first off is that Dig Safe is a multi-state call center. There are only two in the country that serve more than one state. We happen to serve 5 states, so the billing structure that was created almost 30 years ago was designed to break costs down by usage and by


allowing certain size utilities to pay certain costs because they utilize the system more. We start off by taking costs, and I’ll give you a ballpark …..let me try something now…let me step back. Let me start with the principle membership. In this State in Maine….I made some notes here…there are 49 principle members, people such as AT&T, Time Warner, Auburn Water District, Central Maine Power, FairPoint, Mid-Maine Telecom, Natural Gas Pipeline, Northern Utilities, companies like that. Seventy-seven members are general members; they are already paying the dollar a call or a set amount for their billing. For example, those type of members in 2011 – all 77 of them – paid a total of $10,000 to Dig Safe for 1 year, so I’m really, I’m confused of where this item came from because I haven’t heard of any issues that people had with the way Dig Safe billed or at any of the meetings we had. I think one question Sharon had from Kennebunk Light was – she asked a question about non-member utilities and what their fees were with Dig Safe and we explained that non-members don’t belong to Dig Safe; they don’t pay any fees. There is no cost to them because they’re not a member of the organization and I think that was kind of how our discussion went, but how it went further, I’m not really sure.

Dig Safe’s budget in 2011 was ballpark numbers – I’m going to give you some - $4,000,000. Maine’s share, all the Maine members, they paid $500,000 for the share of operating the $4 million budget for the five state period – that’s about 13%. Coincidentally, the call volume, which we used to help break it down by State, was 13%. The State of Massachusetts – 60% of the calls we receive come from the State of Massachusetts, so the bulk of the fees are paid for by the State of Massachusetts and the utilities that operate in that State. The benefit to Maine is piggybacking in as a multi-state call center is that benefit because for $500,000 trying to operate in the State alone -- it’s impossible --when you get costs of rent and computer equipment and especially salaries and benefits, etc. etc. So where it’s sitting right now, Maine sits pretty well. So, I’d really like to hear any comments people have on maybe what their thinking is on that and why we should even change. Another question I have is if a change was made in the Legislature, I’m not sure how the Dig Safe Board of Directors would look at that in terms of Maine paying its fair share and supporting the operation and that might change that relationship. So, we’ve got to balance that off too.

Dick: I’m going to start off Bob by saying that general members are doing essentially what this proposal is suggesting some kind of flat fee. They’re paying a $1.00 a call. It doesn’t matter how big or small they are, as long as they are a general member, that’s what they pay. The principle members in a sense are subsidizing the State of Maine’s portion of the system by the fees that they pay.

Bob Finelli: Right, in supporting the small members, exactly how it was designed.

Dick: If we were to go to a flat system where everybody paid on a per-call basis, including the principle members and the general members, do you think that the dollar call fee would stay the same or would it go up?

Finelli: It would definitely go up; it would have to go up in order to cover the costs.

Dick: Yah, fairly substantially I would think?

Bob Finelli: Yes.

Stan: I think 2 or 3 years ago I went to the Common Ground annual meeting and that was at the timeframe across the nation we were getting into the recession; work slowed down and a lot of call centers that had priced their services on a per-call basis were nearing bankruptcy. The New England Dig Safe system, because


they use a number of call – but’s that’s not their base formula – the base formula is on the miles of line for principle members. I came back from that saying “Wow, we did that right and we don’t want to change that.” So, we want to be careful what we wish for. To go to 100% per-call formula; history has already taught us across the nation that is not a good thing.

Matt K. - This didn’t come up as complaints of members – the general members to amount of money they were paying; this issue arose because one of the things that was told, or one of the issues that was presented by the people who work on this was the costs of membership as a barrier for entering the Dig Safe system. So, this was…really an issue was raised not by people who were members of the Dig Safe system, but it was an issue that was presented by people who weren’t members of the Dig Safe system. Just to encourage the thought process along; rather than the apportionment that changes the amount that the State of Maine pays for the system – because I don’t know that that was an issue – maybe the apportionment amongst members in Maine of the 13% - something that allows entry costs for the current non-member who wants to join Dig Safe system. Because it was presented as a way of trying to get rid of a barrier to somebody who is not a member of Dig Safe who wanted to become a member. I don’t’ think it was ever raised as an issue where people who were current members of the Dig Safe system said it was too expensive or they wanted to pay less.

Ben: My recollection is along the same lines that there was concern that the dollar call is not necessarily bad, but if you have a water district or a municipality that is over a 100 miles or gets more than 200 calls, if they say sure, we want to be a part of the system, are they suddenly going to get lumped into this principle where their cost structure goes up significantly. And I think that’s my recollection of the impetus, the question seems to be: Is it possible to set up a structure where somebody who is not currently required statutorily to be a principle member would be able to join voluntarily and stay a general member even if they had a larger amount. I’m not saying I’m in favor or not in favor but that’s my recollection of what the thrust of the discussion was.

Dan: Part of the discussion was to try to entice everybody to join the Dig Safe system. I know that we had pretty good discussion last time around and that was the general consensus behind. I mean I…..

Randy - I’d like to take that just a step further. Ultimately, and I represent both myself and AGC here and ultimately from the excavators’ standpoint and there was some other support for it in the room; we’re trying to produce the very first item on the list as a one-call system. It was our thought that to do that we had to get the non-member utilities to join Dig Safe. And, as you look down the list, those were all means for us to beat them into submission and join Dig Safe. Since then, we’ve had several discussions outside of the Advisory Group with some of the utilities and ultimately our goal is the one-call system. We don’t really care if they’re members or not. We thought, at the time, that we had to make them be members for the one-call system to work. So, we’ve kind of stepped back from that and are looking at, or, are willing to look at with others, different proposals toward the goal of the one-call system. And I think quite a few of the things on this list were ways for us to twist people’s arms to become members of the Dig Safe system so that we could facilitate the one-call system. And really, the goal is just the one-call system and if there’s a way to do that without making every small water district or sewer district become a member of Dig Safe, then that’s great with us. Our goal is specifically the one-call system.

Bob F. - You said the same thing. The one-call system is them joining -- it can’t be outside it to receive information from Dig Safe. They have to be a part of it so they have to be a member.


Randy - Within the current system. Your correct. We’re not advocating for or against the current system. We’re basically saying we have to find some means to make this a one-call system. Very concerned that – and I don’t have any data to provide you with percentages – but I know for a fact that a good portion of the excavators; the smaller excavators particularly in the State; think that when they call 811 or Dig Safe; however they contact you; they think they’re done. Regardless of what the laws and the statutes state, they think they’re done. And because of cable TV we’ve got stations from Massachusetts and stations from places elsewhere and it’s a one-call system. That’s what everybody thinks. They believe that once they’ve called Dig Safe that they’ve done everything they need to do to prevent damage done to ground utilities. And the fact of the matter in Maine – it may not have started yet.

Greg: So, Randy, forgive me my ignorance. So, is that the real issue here – is that, for the push for a one-call system is that one that you just described? Is that the major or only concern or issue out there? I’m trying to get my hands around sort of what the push for the one call system.

Randy: It think it’s the one-call. And I’m sure you may get some other opinions in the room….

Greg - Yeah, oh yeah.

Randy - But I believe that from an excavator’s standpoint, AGC’s standpoint that’s the biggest issue. I think we have some other issues but they are; quite a few of them are connected to the one-call system.

Greg - I mean from MMA’s standpoint we’d be really curious to get specific examples and all the issues out there so we can sort of get back to our membership and sort of get their side of the story maybe so we can have an open dialogue with this.

Randy - Exactly. And, that’s why I said to Bob that whether it’s within the current system of the Dig Safe systems or if it’s done somehow outside of that; how that could happen. I don’t know, if there could be a subsidy somehow that you know that Dig Safe could make those additional notifications. I don’t know how that could work, but that’s what we’re really interested in is that one-call system.

Dick: I don’t recognize just members of the Group, at least initially, but I’ll certainly recognize other folks before the discussion is over.

Stan - I’m curious how the mapping – for Dig Safe to give notification – they have to have maps. They have to have base maps, okay, that’s the whole key. When someone calls in the customer service rep goes against that base map and says, yes, there’s an underground facility within x feet so, therefore, I Dig Safe have got to notify the A, B, C, D, E & F companies. So, I’m trying to get my head around if they’re not members how Dig Safe would get this mapping?

Randy - Well, that’s funny you bring that up because that was all, that’s always been the first thing brought up when we start talking about a one-call system, is how to make that work and in the Dig Safe not Dig Safe member however that works. However, Bob recognized and brought to our attention last year that that can be done by cities….

Stan - With no mapping, just indexed by town?


Randy - Yeah. No, that means that the utility may get some additional calls that are outside where they don’t have a utility but, for instance, and I’ll just pick on Dan here. He would get a call for every dig in Winthrop whether it was in area where he had a utility or not. So, that part of it seemed like it was a lot simpler to work with than some of the other issues. Cost, I think, is the biggest issue and how that cost would be born.

Ben: It seems like that issue of the mapping could, if we go in a process where joining would not automatically force you into being a primary but you might be able to stay at the dollar per-call; that would allow towns to sort of make a decision of: Is it worthwhile for me because I’m getting so many calls and paying you know and potentially having costs associated with that that I am going to do the mapping or are you going to say well the costs of doing the mapping exceeds what I’m going to be paying annually so it makes sense to me to stay that way. It seems like there are ways to maybe work around this.

Randy - One thing I’d point out under the current system are any of these small utilities are getting these calls now because I’m required as an excavator – I pull up the ok to Dig Safe site online – punch in Bangor and in Bangor specifically I’ve got Bangor Water, I’ve got Bangor Public Works, I’ve got Bangor Sewer and one other.

Stan - Bangor Gas.

Randy - No, see Bangor Gas is a Dig Safe. Okay. Yup. So, these are non-members. There are four calls that we have to make. Those folks get called or notified some way or another anyways so, at that point, they make a determination, without leaving their office I would presume, do we have utilities in that area or not. If they don’t then they send us a fax or an email you clear saying your clear, or they go into a mark-out. So, I don’t see how that would change for them.

?? - But, the whole key to this whole thing is that you have one contractor that does it right. You have another contractor that says that I just called Dig Safe and I’m good to go and hasn’t called that ok to Dig Safe or checked it out.

Randy - Or, doesn’t even know about it, doesn’t understand that it even exists.

Dick: Dana?

Dana Wardwell, City of Bangor: I believe when you call Dig Safe they specifically inform you that this is only for members; there are non-members that you need to contact.

Bob F. - Right, every call is…exactly right. Every call a claim is given. People that don’t know to go another step don’t want to go another step. It’s not that they’re not told to do it. It is part speiel

Randy – I agree completely, I have made 1,000 of those calls.

Bob F. - you have heard every time you

Randy – and I will tell you I know what that means I remember hearing ten years ago and saying yeah whatever.

Sam – you know Bob getting back to that as we go out and do this MUST presentation every year and we still talk OK to dig, I bet you 1/3 of the audience still has not grasp that call of OK to dig.


Bob F. – I don’t the State has done a lot of advertising

Stan – not a lot of updating either

Randy – All the advertising that is done is for the 811 – Dig Safe.

Bob F. – That’s on Dig Safe – this ok to Dig is not a Dig Safe entity.

Randy – I understand very clearly - Bob F., there is a difference there – my point is because I have been involved in this process and I have paid a few of those fines OK, that is how I learned and we operate the system very effectively but what I am telling you is and as Bruce has just said 1/3 of the contractors that are trying to become involved in this don’t understand, they don’t get it, some of them may choose not to get it, I believe I got have been in that category at one point. The fact of the matter is some of them, if there is 10% of the contractors out there that truly don’t understand, and 10% of the contractors in the State of Maine are out there digging with the dig safe ticket with no OK to dig, there are utilities that subject to risk there has got to be a better way to operate this system. It is not a functional one call system and people believe that it is.

Bob F. – See you will never get a 100% buy in – I have been here a long time and this issue been talked about from day one when I started till now. You will never get a 100% buy in, you are still going to have people say I didn’t know no matter what you do but the path is right for a true 100% call center, that is the goal, I agree with you a 100% on that with you.

Randy - and I agree with you, that you are always going to get that guy that says I am good,

Bob F. – no what what we do

Randy - I have been around here a long time and no one has ever pulled anything. I know that.

Johnson - But there is no incentive for the small utilities to join because as soon as they join their tolerance level get shrunk in ½ and now they are subject to fines. The only way you are going to get them to join is to waive that small entities from what I see. Why would you join?

Randy – Right, that was what the discussion was all about last year was there is no administrative penalties, they have a larger tolerance zone, and there are a couple of items that – there are quite a few disincentives to join. What we are trying to do is find a way make this a functional system where number one the tolerance zone is the same for everybody. We actually met with Maine Rural Water, there are some ways to do that I think that will work for the water utilities and others that who have difficult to locate utilities. The money I think is going to be the biggest challenge. You know we are going to start asking these folks to pay as I understand it now, and I will agree with Bob, the only way to make this work under the current system, is to make , someone has got to pay to that fee to the Dig Safe System, where does that money come from? In my opinion nothing should be taken off the table, I hesitate to get beat up by fellow contractors but if I have to pay $5 for a Dig Safe ticket (permit) to cover some of those costs, I don’t know how that is going to work, I don’t know where those monies can come from, but it is very important I think to find out how it could work and make it work.


Sam Murray – just a comment going along with the OK to Dig, it is noted on the ticket - all the utilities may not be in there. Is there any way of getting that note right on the Dig Safe tickets to also call the OK to the State of Maine.

Bob F. – see that is only on the one’s done online, through the internet. That’s easy. But that is not, that’s only about 38% of the tickets.

Sam - We don’t really do that, but also anybody that is taking calls for the State of Maine, do they inform people calling in, say a small contractor that you should also call and check the OK to dig website because there is possibly utilities that might be in there, I mean it just seems like it could possibly be – it is not going to resolve it because even though you give that information to them they may not call it, but you were also talking about certain number of (10%) the people that don’t come – and they are nonmembers and whatnot that’s where the big problem they need to, those are the ones that are, I don’t know if it is through the Legislature or whatever that they start being required to take the MUST training and stuff.

Len – a number of years ago I testified before the Legislature and probably the lone wolf in sanitary utility but my advocate than and is still today, is just require the utilities to do it. We joined years ago. I don’t know how many years now that we have been a member, the reason why I did was cause the natural gas company started digging and we had no idea. I said I am not going to sit there and not know, my job is to protect my utility, I am not going to sit there and not know where a contractor is digging. The only way I can know is by being a member and knowing who is going to dig and I know the city is in an unfunded mandate, we have a utility districts, and I can only speak for us but $2.5 million a year revenue I might pay a $1,000 a year to Bob for being a member

Bob F. – it is not a big bite out of your budget – your paid $970 last June.

Dick - Steve Cox and Jeff McNally

Steve Cox – Engineer from Maine Water Company, correct me if I am wrong PUC but I am pretty sure that we actually put down our dig safe statistics for locate statistics in our PUC report. That data is out there, and I guess my question to everybody is, is, can anybody do a quick back to the envelope analysis on where that $500,000 would be if everyone was a member, does it than become, does the call volume increase to the point where we are $600,000 or $750,000 and at that point determine what its take for the entire state to be covered under this system than back into it dollar wise split it up equitability.

Bob F. – you thought process is good, but adding 1500 members from Maine who knows what that will do to that call volume in the call center.

Steve Cox – but what I am saying, that call volume is already, we are reporting it to the PUC.

Bob F. – no no, but it would change because you would be surprised if you get more members those people that are nonmembers now might not even being calling so you are going to generate more calls because you are going to get more awareness because now they are buying into more they are paying for it.

Steve Cox – throw a fudge factor in. We have got to be able to get a handle on what a one call system will actually create for call volume. If we can’t do, that we can sit hear and talk all day. But if we really don’t know what number is, or target a number, we are really wasting our time.


Randy – I respond to that, that it doesn’t change the call volume.

Steve Cox – It will change the call volume to Bob –

Randy - no it shouldn’t –

Steve -it will because in Camden/Rockland we are not a member, we are receiving a lot of calls that Dig Safe doesn’t.

Randy – than somebody is breaking the law, than if they are digging without calling Dig Safe.

Steve Cox – so what you are telling me, the percentage should be very little increase –

Randy what I am telling you is that the percentage should be exactly zero also in Camden/Rockport.

Johnson – our companies there cable companies are getting a call all because if the utilities that our members are also

Steve Cox – so let’s take that ½ million little cushion on it if you want and then determine if you want, why should my Freeport customer pay a $1 for a call and my Camden/Rockland customer pay $300/$400 a call?

Randy – I want to be clear, the incoming calls to Bob’s system should change by zero. The outgoing notifications are what’s going to increase. This costs to processing them is what is going to increase by some amount.

Steve Cox – so that percentage for your 5 states Maine increases a little. What is that increase? What’s that number? And how do we create a financial system that works for everybody? Whether it is each contractor pitches in a buck and our general members pitch in $2.

Bob F. – you can’t say that because each contractor, who is going to do the accounts receivable when the contractor doesn’t pay the $25 or $50, who chases that? You have to think of that, is the State going to going to be responsible for collecting that revenue, because we have hard enough time getting our member companies paying on time. Now you are adding 20,000

Matt Kaply – do you have an amount an incremental amount of the cost of each notification?

Bob F. – no

Matt K. – I think what he is saying is legitimate – there is going to be additional work, like how much is going to be the additional work?

Bob F. – but see additional work doesn’t mean you can’t take it out of your person or two, if you have change servers, technology because of the increase

Matt K – but can’t we at least – I think the point is well taken, that if you can’t, it is one thing to say we will never know, it is never easy to get to one rough number, if there is some sort of estimate that could be


achieved based on the cost of similar amount of notifications, if there is some starting point, than they are talking about apportioning the actual costs of this work not having to be more work done for nothing. If we can’t begin to wrap our arms around the idea of how much work it will be, there is no way forward.

Stan – Matt if I heard Steve correctly PUC’s already got the call volume from the sewer/water municipalities etc.

Matt K – what we need is a dollar amount

Stan – let’s drive a stake in the ground, get the call volume, OK, that is the first step, Dig Safe can’t do anything because they don’t know what the numbers are

Randy - They do know, they know exactly, every call goes to them first. We are not talking about more Dig Safes we are talking about more notifications

Stan – that is right, but you still need to know how many calls that are currently going through the PUC OK to dig site that are ultimately would be going to Dig Safe output

Randy – I don’t’ want to put to fine a point on this –

plus this must be already doing this as Randy

Randy – and Bob don’t take this wrong way about your server and technology problems but when you type an email does it matter how many people you address it to? Doesn’t it on mine. I suspect that the cost is pretty cheap because all we are talking doing is saying when I call into Dig Safe into Bangor they have to add 4 email addresses to the list of people they notify.

Stan – I agree with you, but to come up with the bottom line what the avoided costs or the incremental costs to the municies are going to be you are going to have an idea of how many calls are coming in. The $1 a ticket if we use the existing thread

Randy – I understand, I see –

Stan you have got to get the denominator somehow than turn around with that same number of calls and look at Dig Safe, excuse me and say what is going to be the incremental costs for the State of Maine for that outgoing thing, I am not arguing with you, I am 100% for a 1 call system. But you have got to get two halfs.

Randy – I understand what you are saying.

Alan - That is like growing your business. Add more outgoing things, I am going to get more money coming back in. I going to get four more dollars per excavation on Bangor or anytime anybody wants to do an excavation Bangor, I am going to charge them a buck, so I am growing my business.

?? - That is just it, they don’t want to pay the buck.

Alan - Well they have got to pay the buck, well every one has to pay.


Randy - The buck seems to be the friggin problem.

?? - Just this morning I was talking to the a utility, just to talk with them and I told them I was going to this meeting and the brought up this question about joining and he said (cause I thought part of this legislation probably misinterpreted was a requirement for municipalities and districts to join) and they – sort of what does it cost to join – but his very 1st question was - does not cost anything to join as a general member you pay the $1 call, said oh that is no problem, oh wow that’s not bad, he didn’t have an issue with it.

Randy – it was identified – the assessment think everyone had to come in as a principal, - think Lewiston was used the example last year maybe the Town of Lewiston, Lewiston Water District, it was a significant amount of money that it was going to cost them to join, if I recall, somebody can correct me if I am wrong, think it pushed $30,000.

Bob F. – Lewiston Water District is a member of Dig Safe – principal member they pay $10,000 a year for as many calls as they want 1 to a million they pay 10 grand that is their share that is there share as they should

Randy – maybe it was just used as amount of tickets per the $1

Bob F. – I think it is about the rumors about membership in Dig Safe is overblown. I don’t think I have gotten a call in the past 7 months asking me prices and we would like to join Dig Safe. Why would they join Dig Safe is the problem? They can mark 36 inches and they can mark 18, they can’t be fined. Why would they join? You have got to start there. This isn’t a billing issue, that’s why I said it is really not that, people talking about Dig Safe costing them $ we have got to make it so they want to join. And then if it is a buck a call, it is a buck a call, that is really what it is.

Alan - OK so we have some municipalities and water districts, some sewer districts and they do not want the Dig Safe suit because they don’t want the, they don’t want – I think all the excavators are asking OK so let them have their 36 inches whatever, let them have whatever they got now, but just notify them that they are going to be dug so much dig on them so he doesn’t have to go on that site and get – he is calling them anyway he just asking that maybe dig safe call them he not have to go call them. I agree with that.

Bob F. – But you are saying do that for free. -

Alan - No, -

Bob F. - But we are back to square one –

Alan - I don’t think the municipalities would mind if you get a dollar for everything

Bob F. – they mind – that is why they are not in – there is a representative sitting right here – cost is a dirving factor.

Greg – cost is a concern sure and the other thing on

Alan – hold on hold on - You mean water districts and all those guys would rather not know if someone is digging on them. I don’t think that is the issue. Randy they do know. No -- Sometimes – you just told me that the small guys don’t call so they would digging along and that is a big deal that’s the big problem – So


Leonard – when I was before the Legislature a couple of years ago the other utilities, sewer/water that testified it wasn’t costs that was the issue, they were still worried, there were two main issues, one issue we don’t know where all the pipes are, and so we don’t be fined if because located properly, so that was one piece and the other really big issue was and I will take us as an example we do not own the sewer line from the house to where it connects to the main. Even at the point in the public way is the responsibility of the property owner not us. What we were afraid of, or at least the district was that under, if we were forced to join dig safe we would than become responsible for locating private sewer lines because – who else is going to do it there were two of three things – it wasn’t the cost from what I heard the testimony of before the Legislature for which the other two utilities to say no we don’t want to be forced as members due to the liability issue, not the cost issue. I am sure that is part of it.

Carl Bisson – You must have some kind of matrix when you did when you came up price of a $1 per ticket for the general members so if you everybody in MA, VT, everybody pays the $1 right for general member

Bob F. – correct

Carl - whatever that general matrix was, like this gentleman said, you know what it is. So that you came to conclusion that, to this gentleman’s point, not everybody gets an email, I know you fax to some people, (only emailing no faxing) so now if you tweak the matrix with a fudge number of we should be able to go the OK to dig website for some kind of data from how many hits they get to that site, should be able to get some kind of rough number and then figure out with that matrix that you had what call volume you are going to increase. If that ticket, if the cost goes up a 25¢ then you can say $1.25 ticket. I don’t know maybe it is difficult to go and we know that the 36 inches is another big kicker.

Bob F. – now we are talking about increasing the fees. But that that is not the problem, the problem is not that. We are still stuck in just getting a dollar, we need the incentive for them to join. What is the incentive for them join.

Randy – We need to take away the disincentive.

Bob F. – thank you – right we need to take away the disincentive

Jeff McNally – Maine Water Utilities Association – we have had a couple of meetings with the contractors since this group met last I think they were very productive and we can be supportive over a one call system if it is built right – we don’t need to build a ship and sink to go to sea – it has got to be built right. I have a couple comments and couple suggestions to some follow-up to some things that have been said here today, I think we have eliminated the mapping requirement last session. Ok, at this standpoint, we talked the OK to dig system, I think we need to talk about that, I don’t know anything about it, from what I heard, it is broken. There are whole big pieces of infrastructure that are not on it. I heard reference to the University of Southern Maine, you can’t no one knows where anything is down there, if that is an issue, that has to be dealt with. The statute piece, I would think, I would suggest, that if people don’t have the statute, it might be good to look at the statute because from the very beginning the fundamental principle of this is that principal members are going to be the utilities who have the really true risk, the dangers and hazard, the electrical, the gas, that is the fundamental piece of the dig safe system and also the costs apportionment of that. So if we go forward with something a little bit different general member, maybe all the water utilities, perhaps the waste water utilities, I am not speaking for them if I can float a general member category and pay the $1 member a call or $2 a call


whatever it is, we would have to think about the merits of moving away from the fundamental principle that most of the calls are being paid by the utilities that presents the greatest risk. We don’t think that water and waste water presents a risk that gas and electric does. The other comment we have said right along that leave the 36 inch tolerance don’t have it be a member/nonmember have it be water/waste water can’t locate them. You know, we all work together up the street to do the best job we can not to have damage, sometimes you have damage. I think there are some real solutions to this, it is just like anything, you have got to be very analytical you have got to do the due diligence to see exactly what you are trying to do and I guess one suggestion I’ll have is the statute, look at the original statute, that is really a pretty good piece of work. And the more you do regulations and this is no secret to anybody, the more you do regulation, the further, sometimes you get away from the intent of the original statute.

Sam – I have a question for Bob. I have been around the gas for 21 years now. I started off in New Hampshire. Now I know back in the 90s and you were around back then. I have heard you name a lot, first time I have met you. But you guys were doing some type of incentive with the utilities because I know Exeter, NH finally became a member because you guys did some type of incentive thing and worked with them to get them onboard.

Bob F. – That was the State of NH that did that. The PUC came up with money to pay for them to get a membership

Sam – Just maintained after that if they wanted to stay.

Bob F. – 50% left after that 50% stuck and 50% are in today.

Sam - and maybe that is something that we could look at. I don’t know if the state has got any money that could maybe help, (laughter) I know we don’t but it might be something to help get some of the municipalities to maybe join. And as far as water and sewer, as far as I am concerned, yeah a lot of the times you are not that dangerous, but you can be just dangerous as gas or anything else. You got a high pressure, forced sewer or water; you can rip out a road just as fast as a gas explosion. So that to me is an excuse not to be on that. You can do that without digging. (Laughter – some kind of comment made) And you are right, our facilities can do the same, we’ve got facilities in the ground. Bangor no, their facilities are not old like ours and Maine Natural Gas, they are doing a lot of gas work but it is all new infrastructure, coated steel pipe, plastic and it is not that, yes you can still have damages from third parties, that is probably where most of their damages are from. On the other hand, we’ve got some pipelines that are cast iron still and we are in a 12 year program right now to get that all cleaned up and get the cast iron out of the ground, but we have facilities that it is very difficult for us to locate and they were put in, some of them late, oldest one in Maine that I have seen is in 1875. So we have some very old stuff that sometimes our records have been lost or they were good records from back then, so there are a lot of things on our side, so I just wanted to express and not to beat up on sewer but that is one thing we had a lot of problems with, because those laterals aren’t marked that’s not required. Technically if we wanted to we could go to the homeowner and tell them you need to call On Target or somebody to locate your sewer. We get a lot of push back from the PUC on some of that stuff, it is hard, we end up usually, if we hit one we work with the Town or the sewer departments and work out we will usually send somebody out to make the repair nobody gets billed and it is not damage that we are responsible, for just some of the things, maybe we can work on some things to get some state funding to entice the departments to go on like they did in NH but if they got 50% of them that actually stayed afterwards to me that is a good amount of utilities. You got way up in No. Maine some that are utilities, that are probably not going to be interested, but like a Portland, your bigger towns, we cover from Lewiston down to Kittery, so


you get a lot of towns that we have to deal with that it would be nice to have that so we don’t have to go the OK to dig system and they will be notified anyways so they will be going out and doing it if they got facilities in those areas. Just a couples of comments we can maybe move forward in these areas but I do agree that we have got to fix the problem the other issues like the 36 inch tolerance the way the tolerance zone for us is just, the 18 inch for us just as bad for water, we have cast iron mains that are very deep because cast iron had to get below the frost cross lines. We have a got a lot of those technical issues to and it hurts when get a fine because we mismarked something.

Dana Wardwell – City of Bangor – in Bangor we require street opening permits requirements to dig within the right of way and we require a dig safe number before we will issue a permit. For issuing permits, about 1500 a year I would say, so a $1 call really isn’t a budget buster for us being there. Even sewer lines there is not only that we don’t know where they are we don’t have access to find out where they are. We are working on getting all of our sanitary sewer on GIS now, making pretty good progress, storm will be after that and then we have got electrical, than fire alarm cables underground. We are working towards being able to do better but we are not there yet

Kathleen – I just to, I am kind of getting a sense that you know one of the bigger issues here for those none member entities is being held responsible for their marks when they cannot identify where these services are in the underground, so maybe we ought to be looking at some sort of good faith effort policy for those types of members where they go out and do their markings and they become a member, they go out and do their markings and you know it is a good faith effort policy for them, they aren’t held maybe to the same standard that the utilities are when it comes to marking because, 1) there records are no, 2) they can’t physically locate those facilities and another comment permitting process for most of those municipals if they institute a permitting process, they can include the cost of their $1 a ticket in their permitting process, so it is a wash if it cost the municipal more than that because you now have to locate but you have to do it anyways with the OK to dig. But the municipals would institute part of that cost in their permit and cover that expense; just a thought.

Alan – Who is responsible when an excavator does hit a sewer line or water line, who is responsible for the repair?

Randy – If it inside the tolerance zone

Alan – no I mean because the let’s say that are not a member or anything

Randy- doesn’t matter it still has to be marked out either way

Alan – it does

Randy - so if it is inside the tolerance zone which at this point is 36 inches from the outside edge of the utility

Alan – right

Randy - if it is inside that tolerance zone ultimately the owner of the utility is responsible because he mismarked it

Alan – right


Randy - I am sorry exactly the opposite, the excavator would be held

Alan – because he is in the zone

Randy - responsible because it was marked correctly. If it is outside that tolerance zone then the operator would be.

Alan – ok

Randy - The reality of it, is something else altogether, the fact of the matter is if I break a water main I am fixing it. Me and water district are fixing it together,

Alan – right, right

Randy - the problem becomes not what me and the water district are going to do, it is what me and those guys are going to do later.

Alan – that’s I hear you

Randy - to be honest.

Kathleen – that is why a good faith policy should be

?? – that is not really fair to Kevin

?? - We are in the same boat – if we can’t locate our facilities by our locate equipment, we go out and physically dig a hole and have to locate that one way or the other and because we don’t somebody to hit it no more than anybody else does, and if we mismark it we are getting fined for it. These other nonmembers are not getting the fines so they don’t really care as much if they don’t mark it right or not. (Everyone erupts in talking over one another) Just to clarify on. Are any of you guys going out and digging a test hole if you need to locate your facilities –

?? – If we were members we would have to

Steve - We have been through that before and to say that water is same or greater risk than gas I think is foolish. Just had a 12 inch main bust under 75 pounds of pressure and yeah it made a little hole, got everything wet. You can put your bucket against a pipe, a water pipe, disrupt it a little and the world does not come to end, a gas pipe can upset the whole system have leakage in the catch basin have leakage into houses, things blow up; completely different. We occasionally test pit if it is in a design process or an area where there is a tight catch basin, a tight sewer, where something is going in and there is going to be an issue. Otherwise we do the best we can to locate it, we identify if it is asbestos cement, where we say we are not sure, or high density pollie etholanie without a mark or wire, we are not sure. It is in this vicinity. When it comes time to do that excavation, why would we test pit it, back fill it, repave patch it, to have them come along dig it all up just to find the pipe to avoid it and do whatever, it makes absolutely no sense. We have been through that. We talked with Randy, we talked with Matt, it absolutely no sense to not necessarily test pit this stuff, that is why early on we agreed that the 36 inch tolerance was reasonable for sewer and water utilities. It was not put


in there originally to be a member or nonmember issue, it was simply a deep utility that sometimes, that not always sometimes is difficult to locate. That is where the 36 came about. And all of a sudden it muddied up in to oh it 36 because you are a nonmember, that had nothing to do with it originally. Originally.

Randy – speak to the best management practices that we talked at our last meeting if you would.

Steve - We talked with Randy and Mark about having a set of just like – cementation and erosion control best management practices. DEP jumps on all the time if you are creating an excavation that is causing an environmental harm due to erosion. So they have developed this set of best management practices for you to have silk fencing and bark mulching fencing and everything you need to minimize that risk of erosion and you follow those best management practices. You can even go to classes and get certified for that where some require it. The concept of that in digging in and around water and waste water utility is not a bad idea, we have crews trained when they go in and dig do a process, it is a process that we don’t vary from. We go down a certain distance we either pole probe, point probe for our main, we are digging our main more than you guys are and we don’t hit it there are ways to do this. It is not because we know where it is. We have proven that. But we dig around it all the time we find it identify it, yes it may take 10 minutes longer, but we are not going .

Ben – Just a quick minutes and I will toss it back to you. Kathleen’s point. The current law does have the best faith effort language, specifically the way it is worded you can only get penalized for a mismarking if it is done in a reckless or negligence manner. Now if there has been a lot issues about that in the past – in the last stakeholder meeting – last stakeholder process the rules of the Commission were required to be changed in order to place a lot more upfront emphasis on this requirement so that the Commission now as part of its process, if it finds – feels – there is going to be crime has to demonstrate why this wasn’t just a mistake why was this negligent or reckless in the initial paperwork. And so in theory we are moving in that direction if there is something out of this stakeholder group to strengthen that further that is fine, but I think it is a legitimate concern if that is one of the things that is causing concerns of nonmembers that if you become a member you suddenly open yourself to being penalized for mismarking even after you have done your absolute best effort. I think the law says that you won’t be and then just becomes a question is that how enforcement is incurred.

?? - I thought the good faith effort – we use for other services; only because we don’t own them. But we have records. I thought the good faith effort was for facility we don’t own because as members my read of the statute by – if you do not know where the pipe is it is my responsibility to find if I have to dig a test hole.

Ben – it becomes a question of what is a reckless or negligent manner that if best practices for the industry require that you dig a test hole and you fail to do so, than arguably you that it negligent but if do all of the steps that are consistent with best practices of your industry and it still gets mismarked because of circumstances beyond your control or because you just plain don’t know where it is because it is a 100 years old that is why this language is in the law. To say if you have followed best practices and you do the same way next time as you did this time and it was a mismarking, that’s not something you can pay a penalty for.

Bob Burns – I came to this meeting thinking I would be opposed to the whole concept. Basically I kind of assumed that what it meant was looking for other funds out there to help defray costs to the members and I am hearing a lot of new information for me so I am open minded at the moment. I like the concept of protecting both the infrastructure and the workers. What I would like to get back to our point, Randy and yours Bob’s about is the disincentives, I think we can make some pretty good progress, just by starting to


establish what are these disincentives that keep communities like the Town of Gorham away from the Dig Safe from wanting to be a member. I think we could make some progress on that so as far – I would like to understand the liabilities for being a member, what are the fines we would likely be faced with, can we resolve those, what additional responsibilities does that mean to the Town of Gorham in terms of having to go out and locate all that stuff. I am kind of in my mind thinking there are street opening permits, I know full well we don’t obtain street opening permits for every excavator that operates in the Town so there are some revenues so I would like to focus on that if we could.

Bob F. - So should we go forward with that point, it is really not a billing problem. A $1 doesn’t seem to be issue, so I think we should take that step and then maybe look to what really is the issue. You want a true one call center. Is it the way Dig Safe billing people keeping them out, I am hearing that is really not true, it is really less information.

?? - The $1 a call isn’t an issue for me, but I would be thrown into the large have a 160 miles of we have got as much sanitary probably as much storm sewer as fore alarm.

Bob F. – see we would only take road miles in that case. If you had all that stuff and it is in the same road way, in your case we would take road miles, so whatever your road miles is, might still put you in category. (still in) but it doesn’t mean that discussion can’t be held at Dig Safe about – there is only 5 had from a study we did from this group years ago – there are 152 remaining water companies and sewers that don’t belong to Dig Safe in the State of Maine. Only 5 of them would be principal members, 147 would be general so we are not talking a big thing here. We are talking 5 companies, one of them is you, Bangor

Dan - and I might point out and I am speaking for Bangor Water because they are a quasi-facility and it is not

Bob F. - so again I don’t think the Dig Safe board if it would make a true one call center in the State of Maine I am sure that we could have a discussion that would say you pay a $1 call.

Steve - I am pretty sure I can go back and get the signed today and we would be a member.

??- That gives up progress to move to now the issues that Bob talked.

Jeff - I think your 152 number is very low.

Bob F. – I am only working on what I was given by the PUC. This was a list back,

Jeff – that is just water

Bob F. – water and waste water

Jeff – water and waste water I bet is 300 or 400

Randy – In response to Bob, strangely enough that’s what we were addressing. Some of the disincentives which this tolerance zone thing is a big stumbling block and what we discussed with Maine Rural Water and some others, that can be worked around. There are several ways to do that and I will just give you a brief explanation of one of the things that we talked about for putting in some best management practices into place and also having some type of agreement that could be signed between an excavator and operator when


there is a situation where they have a utility in the ground they can’t firmly locate. So they can basically say and I am going to just use the example we have got a 20 foot deep plastic water main somewhere and just due to the depth of it that their equipment is not going to locate it even if it has a tracer wire on it within 18 inches. Just simply because of the stack the tolerance stack if you will. So what we do in case like that and I am also not going to be willing to put men out in the hole digging ahead so what we do in a case like we say me and Bangor Water or me and Winthrop Water we say listen, Dan says to me, I know it is here, I don’t exactly where it is I can’t positively mark that for you, and I say ok, how deep is it, he says it is 20 feet deep, good we are going to dig down to 16 feet and are going to be put a trench box in we are going to hand dig the best that we can in the area a couple of feet deep. We are going to find a system where it is satisfactory to Dan and it is satisfactory to me that we can both work in. What we want to do is make it so that while we are working that system, if we strike that main our agreement to supersede the PUC’s the ability to fine either one of us. (Kathleen – Amen) That’s what we are talking about with best management practices, our ability to say we’ve got area problem here. If Dan has got a 12 inch duct line pipe 5 feet deep, ok anybody can find that and even he can if I hit it I am not going to break it. So those aren’t the issues, it is the hard to find ones that become a problem for these folks to swallow with this tolerance zone. There are ways to work around that and make it so it is workable for the operator, and it is workable for the excavator so they are working together. As part of that I would say an incentive to the operator is he’s got me digging test pit so he can locate his utility. (Alan – there you go) seems to me that that ought to be workable system. I think that there is a way to address most of these issues like that.

?? - I have to back Randy up as being a contractor also. It is working in the field. There is communication where the water district or the Town of Gorham will come to you and say preconstruction meeting, or whatever we are not sure. Immediately we start working together. So it is happening in the field and we know it is happening and there are ways that we can jump on this is and hopefully get through it but it is already working in the field that way through communication.

Dana – maybe it is as simple as allowing the facility owner and the contractor to agree we did our best and we are not going to have – not going to file with the PUC on this

Randy – either one of us is not going to hold the other liable – what we need to do have a way to do that

Johnson - That is how it used to be, back before the Public Utilities Commission got involved in it. When there was an excavation going on and they weren’t sure or we weren’t sure we were both out there together and if they hit me, hey we were wrong, we fixed it on our dime. Vice versus, but now one or the other or the other is going to get a fine regardless of whether we are working together or not

Randy – which means we are immediately pointing at each other

Because you are required to –

Jeff - As we dig through these rules, you can’t do that here but, I am wondering and I am thinking that many of the disincentives are in the rule and not the in the statutes because if you are an underground facility operator it is clear who you are. Water or waste are not underground facility operators, even if they voluntarily join, they are excavators, whether they join or not. Let me just finish Matt, like I said I can’t in the law it says that you apply fine for excavators who screw up excavators excavators excavators failure of an unground facility operator to mark location properly, failure of operator if they act in a reckless manner, so if you look at the statute, I think that it is a little bit more concise and I think the rule has maybe gone a little bit further and that


is why we might have some of these disincentives. So that would be something I would suggest we look at some more going forward. Matt K – this is an additional if you join the system you inherently become – you become a member of the system and that was how it was figured in. That was why Portland Water District joined.

Jeff - You become a member but you don’t become an underground facility operator according to statute. Now the rule is where that problem might be. The rule may be where members have the pleasure of being fined. The statute says that you have to be an excavator or an underground facility operator who screws up to be fined.

Matt K. – One page section beyond that in the subsection municipality utility and other entities that owns an underground facility for voluntarily becoming a member of the system, a person that voluntarily becomes a member is deemed an underground facility operator for purposes of this section. So that is actually a statutory issue with it which is one of the disincentives so if you join you are all the way in. If you join you are all the way.

Jeff - Let’s just take a strikeout.

Dick – Sharon do you have any comments to make?

Sharon – Nope – I have been listening and am deeply intrigued. You are covering a lot

Matt Marks – ABC – I am gorgeous about a couple of things I don’t know if there is a process or a utility to take the tolerance zone issue which I think, sounds like everybody somehow is one the same page about what they think, to take that discussion and make it so if it is 18 is there a waiver process that they can use for difficult to find locations I don’t know if that is a possibility. Just a to simplify the process and then the other thing I think the important thing is to really find out the cost I think Bob’s got his hands full on this piece but how many utilities you would have to actually take on and the idea, I don’t know what the PUC, the other one work, the PUC has for a list, I think that is where the math is not where the OK to dig database which how it operates today, or what data you collect, but utilities, but the actual number of utilities he would need to come up with specs. What did you say 152 water.

Bob F. – the list I was given as water

Matt M - seems really low

Matt K - – if that is all he is missing for members that cost I can’t see a huge

Matt – I don’t think that includes waste water

Dick – we have 200 water utilities

Matt M – so I think that is the important number to be able to figure out what the actual expense from there is just about separate them out and make this equitable for everybody.


Dick – it does seem to be some information it would be good to have that we don’t know and we are not sure exactly how we would go about getting it. And it is already in existence or whether it is something that would have to be developed somehow by somebody. Anybody else wants to weigh in on the subject.

Matt K – we were talking about nonmembers one of the things we realized in the last – we did not only talk about in terms of municipalities, water districts, and sewer districts, we also realized over the course last couple of years but it also include larger utilities like Bath Iron Works, University Systems, who own their own systems, who have their own plants, the other thing that I should point out is one of the weaknesses of the OK to dig data base there is no requirement that people update their maps or their information. We don’t have the ability to make people to participate, we just ran into this at Bath Iron Works which has significant large, and very dangerous facility right in the public way in front of the eyes of the shipyard. But we can’t require them to join the database. So as a result of which construction there, now grant if you are working next to the shipyard, it is hard not to notice but if you call, if you are working right next to the shipyard, if you call the Ok to dig database you are not going to get Bath Iron Works because we don’t have their contact information that they have never indicated just who should be contacted, and we can’t make them do that. So, unfortunately while the OK to dig database was sort of setup to cover that gap, it was created without the tools not to really make it

Ben – I know that this topic started out as creating an apportionment but we appeared to have strayed. But I think it is true as Randy has been pointing out that this is a bigger picture that is a hard to peel because it is a part on that it is really is how to we get to one call, this is one of the piece parts of it. But one of the real questions, is the bigger question, and sounds like there may be some movement in the direction if we can set up something about best practices that would serve both as an alternative to having the necessarily split between 18 and 36 inches that if we can setup something set up for the best practices for water maybe for each type of utility that you are looking at so you have this structure in place that you are looking less at for a specific number of inches and more at a way to make sure everyone in the field is working to gather to protect the workers and the underground facilities which is really the goal of this whole thing. The other is to have the best practices structure so that you can avoid the possibility of bringing people in and exposing them to liability that they are currently not exposed to. If you can work around these issues that you might be able to incentivize people to join the system which seems like everybody around the table is saying would be a good solution. So maybe we need to when this comes up next for a discussion, we need start thinking about how do we create these best practices structures, how to make them fair for people whose already voluntarily joined versus people who are potentially going to be voluntarily joining on a going forward basis and how do we make this structure work so that the Commission has some opportunity to access the situation and see if somebody really did do something that deserves to be penalized but again more at the question if everyone is working together in best practices format we should be looking less at how to penalize and look more at how to make ensure everybody is on the page for best practices. It just seems like that’s the direction that everyone around the table seems to be moving towards so I would suggest that we talk about that next time.

?? - The potential maybe for a phase in period. I know with Waterville rulemaking and OSHA lays on us a lot of time what they propose is over a period of 6 to 12 months before it becomes enforceable you have got to – you have got to adjust your best practice to it and maybe that would allow us to do something with some of the members that are tittering on the right thing to do where the $1 a call not sure what that will look like and how am I going recoup that costs and maybe it is a $1 a call up to a certain maximum while the phase-in period happens so that no one shocked into joining and maybe the incentivized folks there they took advantage of this phase-in period it would be a lot less painful and we could work out a lot of these things. I know that it is a shame that you can’t work out some of these issues between the utilities and the contractors


now you end up I’ve got to file are you filing, yup we’ve got to file, next thing you know you get a call you have got a fine on top of it. Not only do you fix it but a period again where we can work together on this stuff. It really goes well.

Dick – Don’t know if I am going to call them assignments or not, but least requests. We like to do this discussion 1) given that we have identified a few disincentives; I suspect there may be others. I ask every member and even nonmembers as well if you would, to think about what might be disincentives and send me those ideas and copy everybody else as well. If you are on the work group you are already part of the email system allows you to send something to everybody else back if you want, but at least, by minimum if you are not a member send them to me and I will send to everybody else so that we can perhaps compile a more full list of what the disincentives are rather than stumbling on them intermittently and that would give us something for you to work on and the 2) Randy had mentioned that there had been some discussions going on about best management practices, perhaps the folks who have been thinking about that outside of this group might be able to put something together that we could begin thinking about within the group as well so

Randy – we have we could do that – we are involved

Dick – I don’t whether it has been just Jeff or AGC or others were involved or all to the degree that you can put something together and get that in we will send it out to everybody and begin to allow folks to begin to think about what that might entail and fit in. It was a very useful discussion, I think we may have gone a little bit off course but sometimes the best discussions are the ones that sort of divert from the immediate issue and get into the bigger issue which sometimes find a way of solving the bigger issue some of the other issues fall way and become much less significant.

Stan – we have gained more ground today than we ever had.

Dick – that is a good comment.

Bob F. – just a quick comment. Open invitation, already gave it to Jeff and Dan, to Greg and Bob, if anybody is interested that wants to see how Dig Safe system operates, just make a phone call and you can come down for a visit.

Dick – I went down and I was down there a couple of months ago with Bob and spent part of the day, it was very useful to have a better feel for what it entails. The number of people he has working, the technology he’s got, how the system operates from the time somebody calls, or sends an email saying I need a dig safe ticket to where it goes from that. It is a useful thing to know.

Stan – I think that might help Bob – or some of the communities understand what are some of the other things I am going to get versus the cost.

Dick – if there are a number of folks that are interested in that sort of thing maybe we can put together a car pool and take everybody down one time and reduce the costs of going down to see what’s going on.

Bruce – I just had one little point about getting paid. I know like an Ez-Pass if you go out of state, if you set up an account, you can pay $75 and you get down to $25 they will send you a bill for $50 to get your account back up, so I was just thinking looking ahead like if the towns are going to belong, Town of Gorham pays $200


the $1 keeps coming they paid ahead and then gets down $50 then get invoice for another $150 to get it back up. Just might a way

Bob F. – we do that now

Bruce - Some companies pay in advance.

Bob F. – easy to pay couple hundred instead $13

Randy – hard as it is to believe I think he was more worried about getting it from us Bruce.

Bob F. – right chase you guys

Dick - we would be more than happy to pay something right up front

Bob F. just send a check right there

Dick – why don’t we take a 10 minute break

Dick – Let’s bring this back together. Good discussions including some conversations offline during the break, hope you all got some good information out of that. Maybe some real progress. Second item on the agenda today is developing a process for the Commission to keep records on successful markings or excavations completed by members by the damage prevention system. I am going to ask the, are you going to Derek or whether Matt is going to do it, about what’s been going on since the last time the Work Group got together and what the Commission has been working on.

Derek – What we’ve done with Bob’s help, and thank you again Bob, we currently have two databases that we are using to track the number of tickets requested by excavators and then the number of locate requests issued by Dig Safe. So, we have one as operator database, or a tracking system, and the other one is an excavator. We have 12 months’ worth of rolling data on the operator side. We were only able to get Dig Safe to keeps six months’ worth of data of the excavation side for tickets requested. We got that information through, I think, March and so what we are doing is at every month Dig Safe is sending us the latest, I don’t know if it’s a month or the latest six months of data for each one of those databases so we are adding a new month so we will have historical data. So we have got now 8 months’ worth of information for excavations and we’ve got 12 months for all operators and we’ll be maintaining that on a going-forward basis. So, we have at our finger tips information on the number of tickets issued and then the number of locates requested. So that way we can comply with the first – with that requirement that we consider how many successful and, as Matt already explained, we are just taking a clear ratio on how many were issued versus how many violations were committed in the previous year – Bob do you have anything else to add to that?

Bob F. – no you said it perfectly – it is one month at a time so eventually we will get to 12 months and we’ll keep rolling.

Derek -- It seems to be working very well.

Dick – So, that is sort of what the Commission is working on right now. Anybody with thoughts on the issue or Legislature assignments?


Alan – That being the request for locate is kind of misrepresented because of the 1,400 locates that I’ve got --I’ve probably got two of mine, so I must look pretty big.

Derek – that was our —I mean, that is exactly what the point was that we have been trying to make is that you’re not necessarily getting a lot of qualitative data from that.

Alan – That’s right, I mean actually it’s garbage.

Laughter……..

It’s not garbage.

Alan – it is very tainted. Recyclable.

Randy – wouldn’t it be fair to say – I know that some of the other state agencies operate this way but if they find me at night in the woods with a gun that is kind of prima facie evidence that I’m night hunting – the fact that I didn’t receive a speeding ticket on my way here today is also prima facie evidence that I wasn’t speeding. And I think that’s the same way that needs to be handled. If I call in a Dig Safe ticket and I don’t see Dennis at some time in the next few days, because somebody called in an incident; then I don’t know how you look at I look at, if I didn’t see Dennis that was a successful excavation.

Matt – The thing of it is I don’t know that it is I don’t know – we have always been aware that that factual finding is impossible without actually visiting every excavation site.

Dick – having someone on the site all the time the excavation is going on.

Matt -- it is impossible but that is what the statute directs us to do. It directs us to do something that is essentially impossible. What we’re doing is because it’s the best we can do, but we could talk about a bunch of things that would be burdensome to everybody to try to do reporting of excavations and so that maybe we could que up at least which tickets resulted in a mark-up and which tickets resulted in actual excavations, because sometimes people call in tickets when they are bidding jobs as opposed to when they are doing jobs but rather than do those things because it would require operators and excavators to do more than they are currently doing which they are uncomfortable with. The proposition -- what we are able to say is -- what we look like, what we look at, this is the only real tangible number that we have, we do have a sense of who is doing what out there, like we know that if you’ve got a 100 employees and you’ve got 200 tickets going at any given time or 50 tickets going at any time, we have a sense of how busy that means you are; how much excavations you are doing; and we compare that in terms of how many violations you have and that has always been to a certain degree how we access that stuff. But this is the number that reflects that. While it is not perfect, it is really as close as we can get without asking you to perform additional reporting requirements for which we are to require, which we have been unwilling to require ????.

Dick – or the alternative of having the Commission have many more staff people covering every excavation that you get a Dig Safe ticket on. I don’t think anybody wants to pay the cost of that.

Sam – Now I’m not sure how much Dennis has worked with Rick before. I just took this position within the last couple of months but – I am with the gas company. Rick is still there and currently he is still going to work


with MUST and Dig Safe with the call center stuff. That may come over to me. We have the PUC and other things. His job is just getting to the point where it is too much for him do and everything so I am going to be doing the damage prevention and I’ve started working with Dennis and Rick. We do have a Dig Track System that we currently use and some of those numbers are in there for us. I am just looking at if we share that with you guys is that going to reflect what we end up getting for fines? I mean, because right now I think we are at almost 5,000 tickets at this period of time this year. I am thinking that it could actually help us. I mean we are doing 5,000 tickets at this period of time; we have three; I think two misprints this year with 5,000 tickets that we had to address.

Derek - One thing I think is this is, there has been a lot of focus on this one particular issue, and I would just like to point out this is one of several criteria the Commission is required to consider when it is assessing a penalty. So, while we absolutely consider it, there is a whole other list of items that you have to consider when you’re assessing the penalty. I just point that out because you know I think we could spend a lot of time trying to really focus on this one thing that has been talked about a lot, and it’s one piece of the equation and if this group decides that we should be looking at something else then we certainly can. But I don’t know that without requiring people to spend a lot more time getting us information; to say “ok this many locates, this is how many we actually went out to.” I don’t know how we can improve that statistic and to some extent I think it gets to a point where it is false precision. What is it telling us? We already look at, if somebody is really busy and if somebody that’s going out and has done a lot of locates, we take that into consideration regarding how many violations they have. But trying to get it down to a very precise number and then having a ratio and then saying with this ratio I just don’t know how far you can go without being very burdensome on the operators.

Matt -- Can I ask a question which is: If you receive a violation and there’s a penalty attached and you feel that doesn’t accurately reflect the level of activity versus the level of successful of excavates versus the level of violations issued and you have information that is more precise, then you can certainly contest the penalty. You can essentially submit that through the review process and say we think the penalty should be less or not based on this information. So you can rebut that because we are aware it is not exactly ???

Sam – But I mean, it sounds like what you are trying to adapt is getting something like that for everybody, but I didn’t know if what we have for data might be helpful with anything that you’re doing.

Matt – well it could help you. But, I think in order to be fair this is the information that is readily available on all operators as well as excavators and we reflect that in the NEIO

Ben – NOEI.

Matt – Once the -- Ben if you can get through that without changing that again I would appreciate not changing it again NOEIs are issued.

Derek – That is what we are trying to do is use the information that we have without – we have heard that this group wants to be less burdensome not more burdensome. So that’s sort of one of the things that we are trying to do is what can we do using the information that we have now without creating an elaborate process that will require a lot more work on your part.

Dick – Alan, and then Ben.


Alan – The way to do that without being more burdensome on an excavator or the operator is to have a one call center and better mapping and cross street information so that they don’t put out so many tickets for excavation.

Well, I will rebut that point.

Bob F. -- We use the Maine E-911 data which is best you can get mixed in with our own data. If the State of Maine can’t give us the data, we will never get it anywhere else. And the Board of Directors voted for this 500 foot safety buffer because the E-911 maps in Auburn, Maine were all 400 feet one street, so in order to capture any areas in data we put a surrounding buffer around an excavation location so that is out of our control. I would love to narrow down what you get for a ticket but unfortunately without liability of choosing when you get a ticket and when you don’t that is what we have to do. I can’t get any better maps than I got. And as a contractor, if you give us two cross streets, we will narrow down the number of utilities we notify because we are only notifying in a window this big instead of the whole street, so it comes back to that. This is the state that we have the best maps in, Maine. It is right from the E-911 department of Maine. It can’t get any better.

Ben – I think it is a very reasonable surrogate. I think that it is keeping in with the spirit of what the Legislation has been about which is – I think the language of the law is not how many excavations were there, were there absolutely no violations of any sort, it’s how many were successful. And I think gets back to Randy’s point, if it went through and no probably had a problem and it worked and no one was hurt and the facilities got swapped out, great, that is a success. And so I think it’s not perfect and I think that the Commission has indicated that they are aware of it so that to the extent that they are looking at the data they know it is fuzzy too. They are going to be able to take that into consideration and if you think that it is not as fuzzy as they thought it was and you have good reason to say that no here is my concrete data that shows that it should have been given significantly less weight than you gave it because this shows how I have been a good actor over the past 12 months, then that’s something you can bring to them to rebut the initial consideration in the investigation. So I think it is a reasonable surrogate; I think it meets the goals that we were talking about, and I think it is a good compromise that the Commission has come up with.

Dick – First Matt and then Mark.

Matt -- I want to circle back just a little bit, one of the things that Bob offered was the ???? through the Dig Safe system. I did that a couple of years ago, and I found it very valuable and I worked with him in setting up that database and so I know he mentioned to do that -- it is worthwhile to do that. One thing that we haven’t really got our hands around is the OK to Dig database here, and I know we mentioned it. I notice that we talked about the need to do it, but the actual costs of operating that system, who is maintaining that, and where that money comes from today to make that happen. I don’t think any of us have a good grasp on what the status of that is.

Dick – I think that is coming out of the PUC budget but the next time around can you give us a little more information about it?

Derek – yup

Dick – Mark.


Mark – Yeah, just to come back around -- I do, I agree that it is a good starting point. It does offer some information and I agree it is not great information, but what I would say, is that perhaps if there was a change in the law that specified a length of excavation; be it a 1,000 feet or whatever that is, count it as one excavation, that would help get those numbers to be more accurate. Right now you are talking a sign post; pre-mark that dig to a 10 mile job -- that 10 mile job you have a lot more opportunity to take some dings on it, so if you specify a number, a segment of that job that can be called in as one excavation. Maybe that helps to get that number to be better. And furthermore, the common ground alliance best practices says you should be using exactly what we are talking about here, as you know, as a base line for past successes and future performance goes; as far as penalties go.

Matt K – I should point out that if there is an error, if that number is fuzzy it’s generally fuzzy under the benefit of excavators or operators. I mean it is never that – it’s funny, maybe – it’s never -- are you are getting credit for too many successful excavations. Before you start arguing for us to make it more precise I just want you guys to be clear on what you are doing.

Lots of talking all together ?????

Stan - How is the OK to Dig website maintained today? Is it being updated or is it exactly like it was 3 years ago?

Matt K – It is probably close to what it was. We don’t have a mechanism to make people update -- we don’t have a mechanism to make people -- there is no requirement that you participate; there is not a requirement that you give us updated information. We will at times -- we don’t have dedicated staff people to run it, it’s the way it’s done; essentially it is an RFP. It is an RFP that goes out with a database and then develops an interactive database, but there isn’t necessarily once it is generated it does sort of become static because there isn’t really any way for us to collect information – we do in the course of our general affairs getting a hold of this nonmember or that nonmember. We might catch an update, but there is nothing that makes – if the Town of Winthrop receives -- if in the Public Works Department if one guy retires and another guy gets promoted there is nobody that changes the email address or the contact information. It is imperfect for that, but I would say it’s an ongoing matter. It’s really not consistently updated, certainly not the way the damage prevention system is, but it is funded by the Commission.

Going back to your Bath Iron Works scenario that you and I had a friendly discussion about, there is no way of getting them to jump onboard?

Matt K. – No, my best solution at that time for – I don’t know about everyone else but BIW is not a member of the OK Dig Safe data base and they were having some disagreement as to who would be notified. My solution at the time was to have the Vice President of MacDonald Douglas notified every single time that we did an excavation and think that it pretty largely shut it down. But we don’t have a mechanism. We can’t make them participate and particularly for larger institutional actors like that. It becomes difficult to even get a hold of the person who would be the correct person to call. That also can be -- that is less true for the University, but that exists with universities and maybe for some other clients. LL Bean I believe is another facility in Freeport that they run and operate on their own. They would also be a large industrial operator.

Is the issue on the private property or the public right of way?


Matt K – well, the service issue was in the public right-of-way but the BIW issue was essentially in the public right-of-way. I mean, it could be both. It’s the truth ????

This is to bring everybody up to speed, just a little bit. BIW runs a 135,000 KV underground electric line from a substation to their yard which is not currently under CMP to mark, or On Target to mark, nor do they mark. They also have live steam that runs across Washington St. One of our subcontractors encountered a concrete duct bank and as we got investigating it, and you know, we brought out the magic wand and it registered +10 out of a possible 9. And we started asking questions and everybody is going, “I don’t know; I don’t know.” Obviously there is potential there for death; both the live steam and, you know whatever. We have had meetings up here and whatever and I think the only way it is going to be resolved is to get BIW to send a representative up here and figure out something -- get onto one of the other -- get on with either Bob, or the OK to Dig site.

Matt K – there is no there are absolutely no enforcement mechanisms and to do anything we rely on their own self-interests to get them to do that and, really, to a great degree, that works, particularly to water districts. And whenever I listen to the water districts and the other operators go back and forth about locating water pipes, in my experience, water utilities are fastidious about locating their facilities. Whether they are concerned that they won’t be able to do it or not, as far as I can tell 99% of the time they do find it -- they find it. Those guys are skilled, they may not know where it is but they seem to figure it out, and I don’t know if they do that working with excavators or not but those concerns about all of a sudden – because we do issue a – it’s called a Notice of Contempt if you’re in violation of blah, blah, blah. We do issue that when a nonmember ????? otherwise violates a provision of the rule or the statute. But we don’t send out a lot of those. I mean, I think that as much as we argue about it at these stakeholder groups, it really doesn’t come a lot operationally. Water utilities, in my experience, are very good at finding and locating the facilities. I would hate for the Group to become hung up on that as an issue just because, at least from our perspective, it doesn’t come up – it comes up nowhere near as much as day to day operations at the Commission.

Stan – if I can just clarify. I used to be with CMP and handled their Dig Safe. And Washington St has two overhead 345 KV no 115,000 volt lines (135,000) the underground going to BIW was replaced a year ago and it is now 4160; used to be 2400 volts. So, to clarify that, there is absolutely no 115,000 volts coming out of Washington St going into BIW.

The only thing I know about electricity is don’t touch it.

The sad part of it is, is when our subcontractor and our crew encountered that, it was duct encased. The worst part of it was -- not 4 weeks prior to that, there was a probe crew down there probing the latch and obviously there were no markings to show that there was any line.

Stan – your point is well taken. It really is; it 100% right.

Randy – the terrifying part of it is, is that it’s still there, and there’s still no means of dealing with it.

Matt K. – Right, and this was actually an operation where the excavators were working for BIW.

For that new gas line.


Matt K -- and so I think that the circumstances that where some of the others – the problem is that it wasn’t marked and the problem is that there were a bunch of engineers standing around trying to figure who it belonged to some of those engineers from CMP, and some from elsewhere. And the problem was nobody knew who it was. That’s always going to be the problem with nonmember operators until such time that it sort of solidifies itself.

Randy – I don’t think it’s really wise to broaden our scope a whole lot, but I also think that we would be shirking our duties as part of any Dig Safe Advisory Committee if we don’t take that under advisement and make some recommendations to somehow make that better because we are going to read about that in the paper someday soon, and it could very well involve fatalities.

Stan – you’ve got several like that, I mean you’ve got Bowdoin College, you’ve got BIW, you’ve got hospitals. I bet there are 100 in the State of Maine.

Randy – we need to give these good folks some teeth somehow if we have the ability so that they can enforce some type of action to make that come into this system in some way shape or form.

Dick – I think that is a good point. Let’s give some thought to what might accomplish that without being…

Without going too far astray, I think. That’s important.

Kathleen - ??? in the public right-of-way -- is to be responsible, to maintain records and locate their facilities.

Dick – In fact, there’s some stuff on propane that already deals that in natural gas so we might find something in there that ??? private owners in a find in a public way.

Kathleen – it is way too dangerous

Wouldn’t that be a high profile thing if someone died down there?

Matt K. – I think we would argue it’s a high profile thing if someone dies from this stuff anyways.

Well I know yeah, won’t the -- the PUC wouldn’t look very good. Everyone would be saying, “where is the PUC, what were they doing, why did they ???

Matt K – I think pointing their finger at the administrative agency is sort of tradition. Laughter – You know, there’s a dollar amount associated with this stuff and we can talk around it sometimes, but the facility needs to be found, and it needs to be located, and it is going to cost X number of dollars. And the question really is who pays how much of that amount and so when we are talking notifications to nonmember operators, what I hear is -- I hear the excavators saying, “I only want to make one phone call organizing this between multi phone calls and multi number operators is expensive burdensome and imperfect. And what I hear the Dig Safe system saying is, “you can’t give us that extra amount of work and have us do it for free because we have limited resources as well.” Some people will have to pay for each of these burdens. The same thing for what we are talking trying to determine exactly how many excavations you got right. We could probably do that, but there’s a cost associated with it. Is it worth it, what we are hearing that this is close enough? If you want everybody to be connected through a one call system there will be a cost associated with that, but I do think that before you can determine what to do about it or how to apportion your calls or how to figure out how to


pay for your calls, you do have to get to a sense of how much that number is going to be. And it may be that, like with the excavations, the cost of getting an exact number is just too high and it is not something anybody wants to address, but if you can’t to an idea of what that will cost, because operators want to be notified. Every operator I have ever talked to wants to be notified that somebody is digging near their stuff and excavators don’t want to have to chase people around because they prefer to know what is underground before they put a bucket down. The solution is somewhere in between the two of those. Really, this Group would need to determine the cost first, and I do agree, remove some of the disincentives.

Randy – I think it is worth saying that I agree completely but I’d elaborate just a bit that these costs are already being born by various parties. The PUC is paying to maintain the OK to Dig website that is dysfunctional. I am paying to go through 250 tickets a year and make an extra 1,250 phone calls to make those tickets valid and they’re dysfunctional, and the operators are paying a cost as well. So I think somewhere some of these monies can made available and maybe everybody has got to step to the plate a little bit too to make that work. Dana spoke about road opening permits and if they go up $3 next week I don’t care. (Laughter) My point being, I think it is a valid point but I also don’t think it is an insurmountable problem.

You know the saddest thing about BIW is once you are inside that fence line at BIW you cannot cross any electric line whether it be 110 volt electric line or a 30,000 volt electric line without them shutting down. If you‘re crossing a major electric line in the yard you have to work a point when they can shut that system off and make a debt ? if you’re crossing 110 volt light blub lines they can shut it off and then you can cross it; you get outside; you can get them to mark any of their lines and you are ok to dig at any time. So, ????

I was just wondering Stan, you may know the answer: Are some of these issues because of the deregulation on the electric side that they’re running their own lines and now it’s a private line on public right-of-ways?

Stan – it is not associated with deregulation but it is associated with private line in public right-of-ways.

Sam – because with gas we – I mean, if somebody decides to run their own gas line coming off from us and that’s because of federal regulations -- they have to file the same PUC regulations in marking out doing the whole 9 yards as a big company. So, if somebody decides they want to run 2 miles of a cogen plant, that 2 miles of pipe is their responsibility and what they have done in the past – with some of that -- we are going to be doing a couple of those this year and UNH in NH just did that a few years back, and then what they do, is they will look it us to do some of the maintenance; do the Dig Safe; stuff like that before they hire On Target or a private company that will do their own locates or what not.

Stan – see the gas company, you’ve got your Federal DOT regs and electric we do not have Federal DOT comparable to that.

Sam – So, I guess that is where the fault lies is on the electric side.

Stan – I’ve been retired. I am not representing CMP. I have been retired for over 4 years now.

Sam – no, but you have the experience and knowledge.

Matt K – People ???? in the office went in in that direction last year in case anybody forgot. I had to draft it so I remember it, but you actually decided that for private property owners specifically for residential rather than increasing the locating, you cut that corner to sort of do or enact what you actually or already do, that if you


hit a sewer lateral you generally don’t call anybody you just fix it because somebody can’t flush their toilet. I would say to a great degree that it is probably also true for a lot of the private facilities that address sewer and water or water and service to water and sewer lines. But, generally those just get fixed and it happens outside of the Commission’s awareness and it falls under the category no flag, no foul. We essentially drafted a change to both the statute and a section of the rules to allow the option for an excavator to either not notify private property owners, not wait and just fix it or if they chose to, notify private property owners; wait for them to mark it, or to continue if they want to have the liability of protections that you get by performing correctly under the Dig Safe statute. So I don’t know that the solution is necessarily, actually CMP and I don’t know why I am pointing at you Stan because you are not CMP

Thank you.

Matt K – but CMP, but also I believe On Target on behalf of FairPoint and some other facilities will also mark, particularly ones that are connected to facilities. So there is awareness and a sensitivity to that it already does occur to a certain degree. I don’t know how far the stakeholder group wants to go towards the wall of somebody’s house if it’s not currently an issue that you’re experiencing.

Randy – Well didn’t we clarify that to make that residential property and that did not include any utility in the right-of-way? It was on private residential property.

Matt K – It is and there is a question of ownership in there, but I think realistically what you’re telling us is and -- I appreciate your candor Randy that usually you are the guy I can count on to say, “I’m supposed to, but I don’t.” What happens in those circumstances and informal circumstances it does just get resolved. And if it does just get resolved and it is not something that people are experiencing in the field, I guess I would encourage the stakeholder group to think twice about whether you want to change regulation or create regulation on the basis of that. There are some things that clearly problems, if you are not having problems dealing with private property owners, like if it is not becoming an issue and it is not becoming an issue with getting your work done, maybe you want bypass that and focus more on the things that we have sort of narrowed to that really need to get resolved.

Ben – the one distinction that I would point out is the residential versus business scenario where there is – you are not going to have a whole bunch of private residential homes that have cogeneration facilities on them that are running out to the right of way. And I think that’s where there is distinction that if it’s on private property and we know of it – the worst we are going to do is cut a sewer line. We will shave off that three days but, if we are nervous we won’t. If we don’t know if there’s something, we will wait the three days, let them do the markings. We didn’t eliminate the marking period for private property, but I think that this is a slightly different situation where there is discussion of are there major nonresidential private property owners who may have things going up to or into the right-of-way that are potentially causing danger to the workers because they don’t appear on any list. And there is no way to find out who to call to get it marked.

Matt K - It does - to make water different than electric and it does. There is a difference between a water service and sewer lateral and an electric primary cable, or certainly the gas service.

Sam – we own everything right to the meter which is at the building anyways.

Discussion in background.


Just to remind everyone: This group was very narrowly defined with private ownership and they came up with the recommendation. The Commission took it in a little bit different direction and they broke these situations out so that you can just dig – like you can just beak something and repair if it is a water or sewer line, but as far as industrial or commercial situations, they were a little uncomfortable in doing that and when it went to the Legislature the Legislature adopted the recommendations of this Work Group, which is, you know, I don’t think it’s as good a piece of work as what the Commission did, so I would encourage you to take a look at that language.

Dick – If there are no final comments, I’ve got one or two….okay Dana.

Dana – I just have a question since I wasn’t here for the previous group: So how is it now with the contractors digging along doing the sewer main and they break laterals or if they are putting in a water line and they break a sewer service ?????

Randy – depends on where they are – in the right-of-way we are subject to all the normal penalties associated with Dig Safe or Public Utilities Commission. When you cross the property line then the private property owners are obligated to mark it. What we’ve recognized is, that’s not going to happen. They don’t know where they are to begin with; they have no ability to find them; and they are not going to hire someone to knock them out. So, we are going to break them; we are going to fix them; and we’re not going to be penalized for it. Inside the right-of-way in Bangor the sewer department marks them out, and if we break them then we would actually be in violation of the rules and subject to some enforcement action.

Matt K – but that’s not an option -- you can’t do that -- you can’t notify the property owners and just sort of dig and if you hit their stuff -- you have to pay for it. But if you warn them you still have the ability to give them three days’ notice to say you are going to excavate and then dig. If you hit their things and their not marked; if they don’t mark up their stuff and you hit it, you’re not required to fix it. So we still left the option for the excavators to protect themselves.

The laterals though are the owners’ responsibility through the mains. I think we try to mark the best we can to help out. But the homeowner owns that service right to the main.

As a homeowner I would be very upset if somebody came to me and said we are doing a dig project here. You are going to have to pay somebody to go mark out it so that we can dig. At Time Warner we do not feel that if we are laying a line someplace that all these customers that we are passing should have to mark their private infrastructure so I can lay my line. I, as the -- in this case would be excavator hiring somebody to do that work. I’m going to get those lines marked out. I would not pay anybody to mark. I would say, “you hit it, you’re going to have to pay for it.

Matt K . – that’s not the way the statute is currently set.

Time Warner -- I understand that, but how many people do you think out there understand that statute?

Matt K. -- I think most of the time it goes the way Randy says it does, which is they hit stuff and they fix it. I think CMP historically – when putting in poles -- has hit sewer laterals and fixed them. I mean, I think this is one of those things that we tried to resolve to make it more clear for excavators, but we weren’t hearing a lot -- we weren’t hearing from the residential homeowners, and I think we weren’t hearing from them because they just fixed when they did it.


Dick – we’re trying to make the rules and the law fit what the practice had become.

Time Warner – And that makes sense. But, it sounds like if Randy decided to go all those homeowners and tell them it’s their responsibility to mark their lines, what percentage do you think would really do that and then if you hit them, it’s their responsibility.

Randy – that’s not – they’re not -- they wouldn’t know how to go about it and it would take me longer to show them than to would to do it.

Time Warner – absolutely, so it is easier for you to say, “If I hit it, I got to fix it, and I’m going to get my job done.

Randy – basically we just acknowledged that and made it so that it is not an enforceable action, we are going to hit it, going to break, going to fix it

That is in the right-of-way.

Randy -- And that is actually – well it wouldn’t matter; if it belongs to – see, sewer and water are probably different. Water goes to the right-of-way. It belongs to the curb stop which is typically to the edge of the right-of-way. In the case of the sewer lateral, if they own it to the main, then we’re covered to the main.

Matt K – the statute seems to say the following provisions cover excavations in areas where the underground facility is owned or operated by persons – it doesn’t seem to be specific to the property owner.

Randy – Yeah, and I was using the right-of-way because I was thinking about water at the time, but you are right, the sewer lateral would actually go to the main.

Matt K – I take that back, it does say are located on private property.

Dick – Sam.

Time Warner -- real quick -- I mean basically we do the same thing as you do. We don’t go to them out of good faith, we just go down the road -- we hope we don’t hit anything. We are fairly shallow; we go typically three feet. So a lot of times we’re not involved. We did just have one recently down in Biddeford. We went across it two years ago and they just now are having major backup problems. There were some other issues that contributed to that, but that was resolved by the City. But they -- we have gone over -- what happened is: some of the old clay pipes and stuff that was just over the top of it pushes down on it; created damage -- may not show up right away – it does get heavy and whatnot so we’re back out fixing it. So, just out of good faith we end up not burdening the customers because, like Randy was saying, it’s going to take us longer to get them to view that then just to through it, and if we hit one or two, we just deal with it at that time.

Randy – to be clear, it hasn’t changed anything except for the fact that I am not going to get one of those NOIE things.

Ben – (laughs) NOEI.


If you hit a sewer you just fix it.

Randy – We always did.

Well, that raises a good point then because I still get those when my service drop feeding line customer gets hit. That’s nothing, it takes us 15 minutes to fix it once we’re onsite, but that is a $1,000 fine because it was mismarked. I can understand if my distribution plan -- now you are affecting businesses and hundreds of customers, but for one off-shoot, that really hurts me.

What we did with Maine National -- we do say 500 services a year as part of their contract and they have to initial. It says this is giving you three days notification that there will be a gas line put on property and you are notified to mark out all your utilities. 99.99% haven’t got a clue but, some people now are being proactive. They will say, “I’m gonna run an electric line out my garage.” Ok, we will help you find it; at least we know that it’s there. If you do hit the situation then you’ve got all your notifications in place. Dick – ok, we’re going to call an end to that – wrap it up. Oh, ok, Steve, I’m sorry.

Steve – is there an opportunity to fold this into best management practices as well?

Dick – certainly if you’ve got some ideas on ways to do that.

Randy – is there a reason?

Steve – just educating people how to work on private property. I am not trying educate you Randy because you do it well; but there’s a lot of them that don’t and ????

That is my concern.

Steve – knowing that you can hit a clay sewer and not even know you hit it because it doesn’t Come up green or – and then you backfill it and now all of a sudden you’ve created some basement damage and that can get significant. Just looking for things like that; knowing that you are in front of a house if probably there is probably a sewer keeping your eyes open, best management practices go a long way.

Ben – I think that’s a good point, and one of the things that we have to consider if we are successful in getting something that people are comfortable moving more people onto the system; whatever that looks like. That is going to require some, at least short-term, increase in training because there are going to be a whole bunch of new people who are going to need to get some of this information that they hadn’t necessarily thought about before. I know I’ve talked a little bit with Kathleen about some of the MUST training opportunities and I know that at the end of last session we did end up having a discussion where the Commission said yes, ask for money from the Dig Safe penalties for training and we’ll use it that purpose. So, I think that’s one thing that we should be thinking about in the long-term. Also that’s hand-in-hand with getting people onto the system. There’s going to be a need to train these new people on the system and right now we do have some resources to do that so we should take advantage of that.

Dick – ok, a couple of final things: Remember, if you’ve got any ideas of disincentives that exist out there send them to me, it doesn’t have to be real detailed, just so we can compile a list. There is going to be a group that is going to put together something in writing on best management practices for us to take a look at a future meeting. And the last item is: We will again send out an email to all with a list of variety of dates probably


during the month of July for a possible meeting. Get your feedback to us as quickly as you can. We ’ll send a separate one to Alan, because his computer doesn’t accept the mass email, and throws it in the trash. I think, but we’ll make sure it gets to Alan to. We will schedule it based on the best feedback we get so we’ll get the most attendance as possible. And today’s was even better than we had expected, so that’s good. We will see you at the next meeting.


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