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Call 811 to Know What’s Below!

You only need to make one free, easy call to get your utility lines marked and help protect you from injury and expense from accidental contact with buried utility cable. Easy to remember, 811 is a new federally mandated national “Call Before You Dig” number that avoids confusion.

Whether you are a professional excavator or a do-it-yourself homeowner, you need to call 811 every time before you start an excavation or digging project. One phone call to 811 quickly and easily begins the process of locating and marking the underground utility lines near your digging project. Calling 811 before you dig helps protect you from injury, expensive damage to utility infrastructure and penalties.

Homeowners often make risky assumptions about whether or not they should get their utility lines marked, but every digging job requires a call – even small projects like planting trees and shrubs. The depth of utility lines varies and there may be multiple utility lines in a common area. Digging without calling can disrupt service to an entire neighborhood, harm you and those around you and potentially result in fines and repair costs.. Calling 811 before every digging job gets your underground utility lines marked for free and helps prevent undesired consequences.

Calling 811 puts your phone call into a national call center from which it will be directed to Minnesota’s Gopher State One Call center. This quick and efficient one call service notifies the appropriate local utilities, which then send locators or locate technicians to the requested site to mark the approximate location of underground lines. Of course, you can still call Gopher State One Call directly at (800) 252-1166.

Operators will ask you for the location of your digging job and route your call to affected utility companies. Your utility companies will then send a professional locator to your location to mark your lines within a few days. It is important to wait until the authorized start date before beginning your digging project, as you must allow time for the local utilities to respond. Once your underground lines have been marked, you will know the approximate location of your utility lines and can dig safely.

Freeborn-Mower Cooperative Services (FMCS) will mark its buried electric lines up to the electric service meter for FREE! From that point on, the power lines are considered private facilities and must be located by the property owner. FMCS does not locate these private power lines for several reasons. The landowner installed and owns these secondary power lines. It is in the overall best interest of FMCS to not assume the risk of locating secondary lines should a dispute arise on the accuracy of the cable locates or if an accident would unfortunately occur.

Call 811! It's a free service that could save your life.