Kansas Law

Kansas Underground Utility Damage Prevention Act

Statute 66-1801
Kansas underground utility damage prevention act
This act shall be known and may be cited as the Kansas underground utility damage prevention act.  History: L. 1993, ch. 217, S. 1; July 1.

Statute 66-1802
Definitions. As used in this act
(a) "Damage" means any impact or contact with an underground facility, its appurtenances or its protective coating, or any weakening of the support for the facility or protective housing which requires repair.
(b) "Emergency" means any condition constituting a clear and present danger to life, health or property, or a customer service outage.
(c) "Excavation" means any operation in which earth, rock or other material below the surface is moved or otherwise displaced by any means, except tilling the soil for normal agricultural purposes, or railroad or road and ditch maintenance that does not change the existing railroad grade, road grade and/or ditch flowline, or operations related to exploration and production of crude oil or natural gas, or both.
(d) "Excavator" means any person who engages directly in excavation activities within the state of Kansas, but shall not include any occupant of a dwelling who:
    (1) Uses such dwelling as a primary residence; and
    (2) excavates on the premises of such dwelling.
(e) "Facility" means any underground line, system or structure used for gathering, storing, conveying, transmitting or distributing gas, electricity, communication, crude oil, refined or processed petroleum, petroleum products or hazardous liquids; facility shall not include, any production petroleum lead lines, salt water disposal lines or injection lines, which are not located on platted land or inside the corporate limits of any city.
(f) "Locatable facility" means facilities for which the tolerance zone can be determined by the operator using generally accepted practices such as as-built construction drawings, system maps, probes, locator devices or any other type of proven technology for locating.
(g) "Marking" means the use of stakes, paint, flags or other clearly identifiable materials to show the field location of underground facilities, in accordance with the rules and regulations promulgated by the state corporation commission in the administration and enforcement of this act.
(h) "Municipality" means any city, county, municipal corporation, public district or public authority located in whole or in part within this state which provides firefighting, law enforcement, ambulance, emergency medical or other emergency services.
(i) "Notification center" means the statewide communication system operated by an organization which has as one of its purposes to receive and record notification of planned excavation in the state from excavators and to disseminate such notification of planned excavation to operators who are members and participants.
(j) "Operator" means any person who owns or operates an underground facility, except for any person who is the owner of real property wherein is located underground facilities for the purpose of furnishing services or materials only to such person or occupants of such property.
(k) "Preengineered project" means a public project or a project which is approved by a public agency wherein the public agency responsible for the project, as part of its engineering and contract procedures, holds a meeting prior to the commencement of any construction work on such project in which all persons, determined by the public agency to have underground facilities located within the construction area of the project, are invited to attend and given an opportunity to verify or inform the public agency of the location of their underground facilities, if any, within the construction area and where the location of all known and underground facilities are duly located or noted on the engineering drawing as specifications for the project.
(l) "Permitted project" means a project where a permit for the work to be performed must be issued by a city, county, state or federal agency and, as a prerequisite to receiving such permit, the applicant must locate all underground facilities in the area of the work and in the vicinity of the excavation and notify each owner of such underground facilities.
(m) "Person" means any individual, partnership, corporation, association, franchise holder, state, city, county or any governmental subdivision or instrumentality of a state and its employees, agents or legal representatives.
(n) "Production petroleum lead line" means an underground facility used for production, gathering or processing on the lease or unit, or for delivery of hydrocarbon gas and/or liquids to an associated tank battery, separator or sales facility. Production petroleum lead lines shall include underground lines associated with lease fuel and saltwater disposal and injection.
(o) "Platted land" means a tract or parcel of land which has been subdivided into lots of less than five acres for the purpose of building developments, including housing developments, and for which a surveyor's plat has been filed of record in the office of the register of deeds in the county where the land is located.
(p) "Tolerance zone" means the area within 24 inches of the outside dimensions in all horizontal directions of an underground facility.
(q) "Update" means an additional request from the excavator to extend the time period of the request for intent to excavate beyond the 15 calendar day duration of the request.
(r) "Whitelining" means the act of marking by the excavator the route or boundary of the proposed excavation site with white paint, white stakes or white flags.
(s) "Working day" means every day, Monday through Friday beginning at 12:01 a.m., except for the following officially recognized holidays: New Year's day, Memorial day, Independence day, Labor day, Thanksgiving day, the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Statute 66-1804
Notice of intent of excavation
(a) Except in the case of an emergency, an excavator shall serve notice of intent of excavation at least two full working days, but not more than 15 calendar days before the scheduled excavation start date, on each operator having underground facilities located in the proposed area of excavation.
(b) The notice of intent to excavate or any subsequent updates shall be valid for 15 calendar days after the excavation start date and such notice shall only describe an area in which the proposed excavation reasonably can be completed within the 15 calendar days.
(c) No person shall make repeated requests for remarking unless the request is due to circumstances not reasonably within the control of such person.
(d) The notice of intent of excavation shall contain the name, address and telephone number of the person filing the notice of intent, the name of the excavator, the date the excavation activity is to commence and the type of excavation being planned. The notice shall also contain the specific location of the excavation. (Dropped