Determining if You Need an 811 Ticket:
Are you planning or involved with an outdoor special event such as a golf tournament, run/walk, wedding, party, festival or fair? If you
will be 
using hand tools or mechanized equipment to dig or install anything on public or private property, getting an 811Â ticket to have underground utilities marked first is required. Plan your event safely and in compliance with Arizona law by having underground facilities located and marked in advance, and then work with caution around paint, flags or other marks you see on the ground.
Examples of event-related work that would require an 811 ticket:
- Installing stakes to secure outdoor tents, “bounce houses” or other large inflatable items or canopies
- Using a shovel, post-hole digger/auger or other tools to install temporary signage, fencing or barricades
- Using tools to pound or drive posts into the ground
- Any other activity defined as “excavation” by Arizona law
Gas pipelines, electric or telecommunications cables, water or sewer lines can be buried just about anywhere in Arizona: beneath golf courses, parks, fields, resort and country club grounds, vacant lots – in rural or urban areas – as well as commercial and residential areas. Arizona law does not guarantee utilities will be located at a specific depth, meaning underground utilities might be just a few inches or several feet below the surface. Accidentally striking a buried utility can result in serious injury, service outages and costly repairs for which you could be liable.
Creating an 811 Ticket is Easy and Free:
- Call the simple three-digit number, 8-1-1, from anywhere in Arizona at least two full working days before work begins. If you’re calling from outside of Arizona to create an 811 ticket for an Arizona event, call 1-800-STAKE-IT (1-800-782-5348). The Arizona 811 Call Center is open from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. (MST) Monday-Friday, excluding state holidays.
- For events at a single residential address, you can use the Single Address Ticket tool to create and submit your ticket online any time – even when the Call Center is closed.
Be Prepared to Provide:
- An address where the event will take place – including a description of where on the property your work will occur.
- Information such as an intersection, landmark and directions to get
to the location of your work area if the site is
difficult to describe. - A job site description, such as which side(s) of the lot you will be working on (north, south, east, west, front yard, backyard, side lot) and the dimensions of the area in which you’ll be working.
- Physical access to your work site:
- Unlock gates or provide gate codes
- Remove and safely contain dogs or other pets. Even if a pet looks friendly, locators will not enter the yard
- The name and telephone number of a contact person if the utility locators
have questions - Your email address so you can quickly receive responses from locators indicating the status of their markings (such as “No Conflict,” “Marked Completely” or
“No Access”) - Contractor/Subcontractor information: If you’re hiring a contractor or someone else to do work for you or to assist you, provide the company’s or individual’s name, a contact person for them and their telephone number. Anyone doing work must be listed on your ticket so they are valid to dig or have their own 811 ticket for the job.
To Help Locators Better Identify Your Site:
Consider marking out your dig/installation site(s) with WHITE paint or WHITE flags. Do not use any color other than WHITE to mark out a dig site. You can mark all four boundaries, a point you will be referencing as the center of a radius or as the centerline of a path. Be sure if you indicate your dig site will be marked out in white that you have marked it out, because utility locators will be looking for those white lines or flags at your event site.
After Your Ticket is Submitted:
- Allow two full working days for locators to mark the location of their buried facilities at your event site or inform
you of “No Conflict.” A “No Conflict” response means the utility owner/operator does not have facilities buried at
the site you described.
- Verify that every utility owner/operator listed on your 811 ticket responded. If you are missing any marks or responses, do not begin working. Instead, contact Arizona 811 to ensure that 100% of the necessary responses have been received.
- Utilities will be marked using colors in accordance with the APWA Uniform Color Code for Utility Markings.
- Avoid digging, installing or excavating within two feet (24 inches) of any paint or flags on the ground. This 24-inch area is known as the Tolerance Zone and is in addition to the width of the facility, if indicated, from each side of the marked facility. If you cannot avoid working in the Tolerance Zone, use extreme caution, and note that Arizona law requires that you only use hand tools and you must support and protect any
exposed facilities. - If you have questions about any of the marks you see, our staff is always available during working hours to
provide assistance! - For general questions, please email Customer.Support@arizona811.com
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Click on the question to view the corresponding answer.
A : The law is A.R.S. 40-360.21-31, and requires anyone who is excavating on public or private property for any reason to determine, in advance, “whether underground facilities will be encountered, and if so where they are located from each and every underground facilities operator and taking measures for control of the facilities in a careful and prudent manner.”
A : Yes. Underground facility operators could have utilities buried on your private property, so they must be located and marked to prevent serious injuries and damage. In addition, Arizona law requires anyone who digs for any reason to have underground utilities located before digging begins.
A : Although Arizona 811 processes your request to have utilities marked, Arizona 811 does not provide utility marking services; rather, the underground facility operators who have utilities buried at your dig site will send qualified personnel – called Locators – to your dig site to identify and mark the facilities they own and operate. By law, each facility operators’ Locators must respond to your request within two full working days, excluding weekends and state holidays.
A : NO. If you have not received responses from 100-percent of the underground facility operators listed on your ticket, call 811 to process a priority request. It is not safe or legal to dig if you do not have received responses from all the affected utilities at your dig site.
A : The paint you see in the street near your dig site is called an “offset marking.” When a locator marks a non-permanent surface, such as grass or dirt, he or she can also put an offset marking on the nearest permanent surface (such as a sidewalk, street or driveway) to indicate the distance (in feet) and direction of the underground utility from your dig site. This further protects you from injury, and utilities from damage, in case the marks at the dig site are damaged or destroyed. For example, if you water or mow your front lawn, the paint will be destroyed; but, having the offset marking nearby ensures that you still know the location of the buried facility in the area where you plan to dig.
A : We hope this never happens! If it does, stop digging. Call 911 if necessary; striking an electric or gas line can result in serious or even fatal injuries, fire and catastrophic explosions. In the event of a gas line strike, evacuate up wind and call 911 from a safe area where there are no gas vapors. No matter what type of utility it is, you are also required to call the owner or operator of the utility. Telephone numbers are listed under Emergency Contacts on this web site. Call 811 to document the incident and if you have questions about the location of the marks at your dig site. Never allow any utility strike go unreported, even if the damage seems very minor. Over time, even minor damage can compromise the integrity of the line, cable or pipe and lead to a serious problem later. Also, never try to repair the damage yourself.
A : No, it is correct. Your ticket provides the names of every facility owner/operator that has utilities buried at your planned dig site, even if you do not receive services from all of them. It’s important to remember that hundreds of miles of underground facilities have been installed across Arizona during the past several decades. In many cases utility lines and pipelines were installed long before existing homes and businesses were constructed. It’s not uncommon to see the names of utility companies you don’t purchases services from, or utility types you don’t even use, listed on your ticket. You might even see two of the same type of utility – such as two different cable TV or electricity providers – even though you do business with only one of them. Regardless, be sure that 100 percent of the utilities listed on your ticket have responded before you begin to dig!
A : There is no difference under Arizona law. In fact, Arizona law defines excavating as any operation in which earth, rock, or other material in the ground is moved, removed or otherwise displaced by means or use of any tools, equipment or explosives and includes, without limitation, grading, trenching, digging, ditching, drilling, auguring, boring, tunneling, scraping, cable or pipe plowing and driving.
A : Yes. Effective January 1, 2007, and pursuant to A.R.S. 40-360-32: Every landlord shall file with a one-call notification center (Arizona 811) the property name, property address, contact name and/or job title, contact fax number (if available), contact mailing address, contact email address (if available), contact telephone number and hours of contact, which must be at least 30 hours per week.
– To download the form to use for registration with Arizona 811, please click here.
– There are additional Landlord requirements under A.R.S. 40-360. Please click here for entire text of law.
– To download the form to use for registration with Arizona 811, please click here.
– There are additional Landlord requirements under A.R.S. 40-360. Please click here for entire text of law.
A : By law, you are required to notify the landlord in advance by certified mail. Effective January 1, 2007, and pursuant to A.R.S. 40-360.22: For all excavations in an apartment community or mobile home park, the excavator shall inform the landlord as promptly as practical that the excavator intends to submit an inquiry to the landlord that will trigger the landlord’s obligation provided by section B of this section and the inquiry itself shall be made by certified mail to the landlord, using a form prepared by a one-call notification center.
– To download the form to notify landlords registered with Arizona 811 about your plans to dig, please click here.
– There are additional excavator requirements related to landlord notification and response. Please click here for the entire text of the law.
– To download the form to notify landlords registered with Arizona 811 about your plans to dig, please click here.
– There are additional excavator requirements related to landlord notification and response. Please click here for the entire text of the law.
A : Utility markings are valid for 15 working days, excluding weekends and state holidays. If your ticket expires and you continue to dig, you are in violation of state law. Updating your ticket keeps you in compliance with the law so you don’t risk being cited and fined. The easiest way to remember to update your ticket is to call 811 three weeks from the date you created your original ticket, and continue calling every three weeks for the duration of your project. It’s also important to note that your markings must remain visible and valid. If the markings at your dig site disappear or are destroyed for any reason, you must update your ticket immediately.
A : Yes, you can meet with the Locators at the excavation site. This request is processed as a “Meet Ticket” and is simply a request to meet on site with the Locators at an appointed time. The Locators are not required to mark at this time, so be sure to contact Arizona 811 to request a “Routine Ticket” after the meeting. The facility owners/operators then have two full working days, excluding weekends and state holidays, to mark their facilities.
A : Do not dig. Instead, be sure to process a follow-up transaction on your ticket by 1) calling 811 or 2) by using the “Edit” function in E-Stake and selecting the appropriate description for your situation (“Ready to dig, but one or more facility owner/operator(s) failed to respond.”). You can also process a similar transaction if you received a response from one or more facility owner/operator(s) by telephone, email or electronically posted in E-Stake, which you did not agree to or did not understand (“Ready to dig, but have questions on marks appearing on my job site or on other responses received.”).
Please specify in the “Remarks” section which facility owner/operator(s) are impacted and the details of the issue (Did they not respond at all? Were their marks incomplete? Do you not understand their marks? Did you receive a voice mail message, email or other notice that you did not agree to or understand?).
When you are ready to submit this transaction, have the Arizona 811 Locate Specialist select (if by phone) or you can select (if by E-Stake) only the facility owner/operator(s) that are impacted. This transaction will be treated as a priority and will be sent to the impacted facility owner/operator(s) immediately.
It is important to process this follow-up transaction to document the situation in addition to any other verbal or written communication you have with the facility owner/operator(s) to ensure proper documentation of the situation is recorded on your ticket. For assistance, contact Call Center Operations Manager Brad Simon at (602) 659-7501 or Brad.Simon@Arizona811.com
A : The depth of buried facilities is never guaranteed, and no indication of depth can be given or indicated. Ongoing changes to the surface of the earth, naturally or otherwise, continually change the depth of the buried facilities. For example, it’s possible for a facility that was originally installed several feet underground to be only a few feet – or inches – beneath the surface because of erosion, grading or other factors. For this reason, always use caution when digging!
A : The uniform color code designates specific colors for specific utility types, as well as proposed excavation sites and temporary survey marks:
- White = Proposed excavation site
- Pink = Temporary survey
- Red = Electric power
- Yellow = Gas, oil product lines (includes natural and liquid gases)
- Orange = Communications, cable TV, fiber optics
- Blue = Water, slurry
- Purple = Reclaimed water
- Green = Sanitary sewer system, storm drain
A : The Arizona Corporation Commission is the enforcement agency. The civil penalty is $5,000 per violation.
MARKING COLOR CODES
Proposed Excavation
Electric Power
Communication / Cable TV
Reclaimed Water
Temporary Survey
Gas, Oil Product Lines
Water Systems, Slurry