Call Before You Dig

There are underground utility pipes, cables, and wires in places that you would never expect, and often close to the surface!

Cutting or breaking any of these underground utilities can incur extremely high repair costs as well as service disruption for numerous residents, and property damage. However in the case of severing or cutting into electric or natural gas lines, it can cause severe injury or even be deadly.

What Is New Jersey One-Call?
One Call Systems, Inc., (OCS) is charged with operating the utility damage prevention system statewide, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Their obligation is to receive and record the notice of intent to excavate, assign a notification number to each intent to excavate, and transmit the information to the appropriate utilities promptly.  One Call Systems, Inc., (OCS) has been providing underground notification and damage protection services to utility companies nationwide since 1975.

When Do I Use The One-Call System?
Anytime you (contractor OR homeowner) plan to dig (excavation, demolition, and blasting) whether it's a large construction or a homeowner project, such as putting up a fence, clothesline pole, mailbox post, or even a real estate sign post, creating a new garden (existing gardens are excluded), building a home addition, deck, or foundation, etc., you must call not less than three (3) business days or more than ten (10) business days in advance. A business day is any day, not including weekends or holidays. The number to call is 1-800-272-1000.

Additional One-Call Details For Those Interested
The One-Call system alerts the various utility companies who may have buried pipes, cables, and wires in your specific area. Each utility company will "Mark Out" the locations of their underground apparatus to alert you of its location. Each type of utility uses a different color marking paint for their portion. Blue is Water; Green is Sewer; Yellow is Natural Gas; Red is Electric; and Orange is Telephone, Cable TV or other Communications Lines, including Fiber Optics. White marking paint is to be utilized to mark out the proposed digging area(s) by the contractor or homeowner in advance of the various utilities companies arrival to identify and mark the locations of their respective underground pipes, cables, or wires. In addition to the colored marking paint, most utility companies will often insert marker flags as well, bearing the same utility color scheme. The Hillsborough MUA will mark out sewer lines in green, following the standard mark out color codes. We at the Hillsborough MUA, as a utility company, are not exempt from requesting mark-outs either!  You may have even observed us applying the white marking paint in areas of proposed excavation for a new installation or replacement of our own underground equipment so the other of utility companies can identify our proposed excavation areas and apply their color coded markings as accordingly. However, in certain emergency cases when we must immediately dig into the ground to repair a broken Hillsborough MUA sewer line, we can alert the other utility companies of our emergency and begin our emergency excavation immediately. In these emergency cases we have defined procedures to follow.