We just completed our annual Damage Prevention Summit in Franklin, and I’m happy to report that our annual membership meeting – conducted during the Summit – had record attendance.
For those who missed this year’s event, the Summit kicked off with guest speaker Chris Czarnik’s talk about “Winning the War for Talent”. Chris is a gifted speaker and did a great job explaining the ins and outs of today’s workforce challenges, plus concepts and tactics that we can all use to attract the right people into our organizations. After Chris and the annual meeting, the sessions shifted focus to damage prevention challenges impacting the state, from broadband expansion to the legislative priorities of our stakeholders.
I would like to take this opportunity to focus on key takeaways from the two-part legislative roundtable. The first hour of the session was to discuss past legislative changes; what changes have been made and what has been the impact on damage prevention as a result of those changes? The second session was to discuss the future legislative changes; what changes are necessary to improve our damage prevention efforts in the future?
Past changes:
- Effective enforcement and the creation of a 17-member enforcement board – all agreed that this has made Tennessee better, however, there are still concerns that enforcement is not balanced, due to complaints mostly only being filed against excavators.
- Damage reporting and damage notices – everyone agreed that damage data is key to targeting our efforts and measuring success, but the limited data we are currently able to collect paints an incomplete picture.
- Hand digging clause – only property owners digging on their property and operators working on their own facilities are exempt from calling when hand digging no more than 12 inches deep. Prior to this change, hand digging did not require a locate request, therefore, everyone agreed that this is better than what we had previously.
- Increased civil penalties and the opportunity to mitigate a penalty with training – mostly everyone agrees with the changes, but some violators would rather pay the penalty than go through training, meaning they are not better equipped to avoid future violations
Future objectives:
- White paint (or electronic white lining) for proposed excavation area – there seems to be a consensus that exemptions to the current requirement for white lining are too broad, and exemptions should only exist for nonprofessional groups, like homeowners. A requirement to mark an additional buffer area beyond the white markings would allow excavators room to adjust their route when markings reveal conflicts.
- Untonable facilities – when an underground facility is untonable, it may be necessary to allow the utility operator additional time to locate the facilities prior to excavation.
- Weather related delays – the current law does not allow an operator to delay the locating responsibility due to weather or extenuating circumstances. It was suggested that a provision be included to allow this.
- Mandatory damage reporting – while damage reporting through DIRT (for utility operators) and damage notices (for excavators) is required, neither have good usage rates. The suggestion is to clarify the requirement and improve enforcement of this provision of the law.
Unfortunately, an hour timeslot only allows us to skim the surface of how we can improve the law in our state, but the discussion added depth and context to the ideas we’ve been considering for 2026. We’ll continue to update stakeholders as we work to prepare for the next amendment.
If you were able to join us for the Summit, or even just the annual meeting, we really appreciate your time and participation. Whether you were able to attend or not, I’d like to thank you for your daily efforts to make Tennessee a safer place.