April is National Safe Digging Month

April marks the 10^th annual National Safe Digging Month, which reminds Wisconsin residents to contact Diggers Hotline before any digging project to have underground utility lines marked.

Diggers Hotline is a free service that helps protect Wisconsin residents from injury and repair costs that may occur when striking a buried utility line.

Anyone in Wisconsin digging with a shovel, posthole digger or anything else that disturbs the soil is required to contact Diggers Hotline, either by phone by dialing 811 or at www.DiggersHotline.com three working days before the project begins. Diggers Hotline then notifies the appropriate utility companies, which send out professional locators to mark the locations of underground lines with flags or paint at the dig site.

Installing a mailbox, building a deck, planting a tree and laying a patio are all examples of digging projects that need Diggers Hotline before starting.

It doesn’t matter how deep the digging project will go. The depth of utility lines can vary for a number of reasons, such as erosion, previous digging projects and uneven surfaces. Utility lines need to be marked because even when digging only a few inches, the risk of striking an underground utility line still exists.

Every nine minutes an underground utility line is damaged in the United States because someone decided to dig without contacting 811.

Diggers Hotline can be reached via phone by dialing 811, or at www.DiggersHotline.com