Page 10 - Mississippi

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Definitions
• Abandoned Facility - Any underground utility/facility line that is no longer used in business and is not intended to be used in the future.
• Board - Underground Facilities Damage Prevention Board
• Calendar day - A 24-hour period
• Damage - The substantial weakening of structural or lateral support
of underground utility/facility
lines, penetration or destruction
of any protective coating, housing, or other protective devices of an underground utility/facility, and the partial or complete severance of any underground utility/facility but does not include abandoned facilities.
• Excavate or Excavation - Includes, but is not limited to, the operations of demolition, blasting, grading, land leveling, trenching, digging, ditching, drilling, augering, directional boring, tunneling, scraping, cable or pipe plowing, driving, jacking, wrecking, razing, rending, dredging and anchoring, moving or removing any structure or other material or mass of material on or below the ground, except for the following:
o Tilling soil less than 24 inches deep for agricultural purposes
o Excavating less than 12 inches deep on private property by the owner without using mechanical equipment.
o Excavating less than 12 inches deep on private property by a non-owner without mechanical equipment, except in marked underground areas.
o Routine railroad maintenance within 30 feet of the track structure, drainage ditches, or within the railroad right-of- way by railroad employees or contractors, done carefully to avoid damaging underground facilities.
o Routine railroad maintenance conducted within the track structure, drainage ditches,
or within the railroad right- of-way up to 30 feet from the outside rail of the outermost track, by railroad employees or contractors, done carefully to avoid damaging underground facilities.
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o Routine cemetery activities after notifying MS811, and all affected operators have confirmed that there are no underground facilities within the cemetery
o Routine maintenance of public roads or rights-of-way, not penetrating more than 12 inches deep, done carefully to protect underground facilities.
o Driving wooden stakes by hand, not deeper than 6 inches.
Excavator - Any person who engages directly in excavation.
Mark - The use of stakes, paint, or other identifiable materials to show the field location of underground facilities following the current color code standard of the American Public Works Assoc. This includes uncovering underground facilities or pointing out aboveground facilities such as, but not limited to, manhole covers, valve boxes, and pipe and cable risers, which indicate the location of underground facilities.
Operator - Any person who owns or operates a utility excluding railroads or the MS Dept. of Transportation.
Underground Facility - Any underground utility lines and other items buried or submerged including, but not limited to, pipes, sewers, conduits, cables, valves, lines, wires, manholes, vaults, attachments, and those portions of poles below the ground.
Underground Utility Lines -
Buried cable, conduit pipes, and related facilities for transportation and delivery of electricity, telecommunications (including fiber optics), water, sewage, gas, mixtures of gases, petroleum, petroleum products or hazardous, flammable, toxic or corrosive liquids.
Utility - Any person who supplies, distributes, or transports through underground utility/facility lines or any of the following materials or services: gas, mixture of gases, petroleum, petroleum products
or hazardous, toxic, flammable,
or corrosive liquids, electricity, telecommunications (including fiber optics), sewage, drainage, water, steam or other substances.
Working Day - 24 hours commencing from the time a locate request
is entered into the MS811 system excluding Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays.
The following legal holidays (state
and federal) are excluded as working days in the MS811 system. This means that the system skips them when calculating the legal locate by date/time on locate request tickets. You will need to remember that this can affect how soon requests submitted around these holidays are located.
o New Year’s Day
o Robert E Lee/Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Birthday/President’s Day/Washington’s Birthday
o Confederate Memorial Day o Memorial Day
o Juneteenth
o Independence Day
o Labor Day
o Columbus Day
o Veterans Day
o Thanksgiving Day o Christmas Day
Note: Although the MS811 office is closed the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, they are not considered as legal holidays; therefore, they are considered a working day in the MS811 system.
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Locate Request Ticket - An electronic document generated by MS811. The document contains the excavation project details provided by the excavator as well as the following important date/time information.
o Work On – When the excavator would like to have the lines located by and begin their work.
o Locate By – When the utilities are required to be located by.
o Update From & Update To – The time in which the locate request must be updated.
o Expires – When the locate request will expire.
MS Dig Law or Law - Mississippi Code of 1972, Chapter 13, Sections 77- 13-1 through 77-13-23
Trenchless Excavation - Horizontal excavation parallel to the surface of the earth which does not use trenching or vertical digging as the
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8 • Mississippi 811 2024, Issue 3