If it is gas, call 911 first. Not the gas company, not your office, not the homeowner. 911. Then shut every engine down and get people away from it. New Jersey's rules say immediately, and they mean immediately.
Everything else about hitting a line is negotiable. That part is not, and it is worth knowing before it happens rather than during.
What the rules actually require when you hit something
New Jersey sets this out at N.J.A.C. 14:2-3.6, and it splits into two cases.
Gas, liquid petroleum, or any other hazardous liquid. The excavator shall immediately call 911, and immediately thereafter report the damage to the operator. If the operator cannot be reached, report it to the One-Call center at 811.
Anything else. Report it immediately to the facility operator, and immediately thereafter to the One-Call center.
Note the word doing the work in both: immediately. There is no grace period and no end-of-day window. And the rule is explicit that it applies regardless of whether the damage results in an emergency, an accident, or a dangerous condition. A nick that is not leaking still gets reported.
The gas one, in order
If you have opened a gas line, the sequence matters more than the paperwork.
- Call 911. Fire, police and the gas company get dispatched together.
- Shut off every engine and every ignition source. This is the part people underestimate. It is not only flame you are worried about, it is static. Machines, trucks, generators, anything running, off.
- Get away from it, and take everyone with you. Upwind and uphill if you have the choice.
- If you are in a residential area, start getting ahead of it. Do not wait to be told to knock on doors. Getting neighbors out early costs nothing if it turns out to be minor.
Nobody who has stood next to an open gas line needs this explained. Everybody who has not should read it once now.
Public line or private line changes what happens next
A public utility gets the notification sequence above, without exception.
A private line is a different situation. A dog fence, an irrigation system, a private feed running out to a barn or a shed: these belong to the property owner, not to a utility, and there is generally nobody to report them to. That gets resolved between the excavator and the customer, and it should be resolved rather than argued about.
Private lines are also the ones most likely to get hit, because nobody marks them. A markout covers the utilities' facilities. It does not cover the conduit somebody's brother-in-law buried to the pool shed in 1998. If you know about a private line on your property, tell your contractor before the machines arrive, because that conversation is much cheaper than the alternative.
The gap nobody tells homeowners about: old plastic water lines may not get marked at all
This one is written into the rules and almost nobody knows it.
Under N.J.A.C. 14:2-4.1(b), an operator of a non-metallic water pipe installed before November 18, 1994 is exempt from the requirement to mark it out. A locator cannot find plastic the way they find metal, and the rule acknowledges that.
What the operator must do instead is cooperate, within three business days, in reasonable efforts to determine where the line is, including a site meeting, and including tracking down what they know: the location of the meter and curb shutoff, the closest building penetration to the meter, where the service connects to the main, the diameter, the composition, and their own service records.
In practice that means if your house has an old plastic water service, a clean markout does not mean there is nothing there. It means nobody was required to paint it. That is a very different thing, and it is the reason careful crews hand-dig where they expect a service to be even when the grass is unpainted.
Do I need to call 811 to dig on my own property?
Usually yes, and the rule says so directly: "Excavator" means any person performing excavation or demolition, including a homeowner or someone digging on residential property on a homeowner's behalf.
There are exclusions, and they are narrower than most people assume. The rule does not cover routine maintenance of residential property performed with non-mechanized equipment, or using a hand tool to fix a sprinkler or find a property marker if you are not going deeper than six inches, or routine landscaping with machines that only cut vegetation, like edging and de-thatching.
So hand-weeding a flower bed is not what this rule is aimed at. But look at what the definition of excavation does name explicitly: drilling, grading, boring, trenching, tree and root removal, cable or pipe plowing, and fence post or pile driving. Those are ordinary weekend homeowner jobs, and every one of them is excavation. Rent a mini excavator or an auger for an afternoon and you are an excavator under New Jersey law, with the same obligations as a contractor.
The honest advice is simpler than the rule: if a machine is involved, or you are going deeper than a hand tool in a flower bed, call. It is free.
Why depth requirements are not a substitute for a markout
People assume that because there are minimum burial depths, they can dig shallow safely. That reasoning fails for one reason: the depth requirement applied to the crew who installed the line, and you have no idea whether they met it.
Somebody was having a bad Friday in 1987 and that gas line went in shallower than it should have. Nothing about your project changes that. It is why the rules keep mechanized equipment two feet back from a mark until the facility has been exposed by hand.
New Jersey actually anticipates this. Under the same damage reporting rule, an excavator who finds a facility buried at a depth that is insufficient for safety may submit a dangerous condition reporting form to the One-Call center. If you find something shallow, that form exists so the next person does not find it the hard way.
If the locators never showed up
Notice has to go in not less than three business days and not more than 10 business days before you dig. Business days do not include weekends or holidays, so a Monday call is not clear until Friday, and a call before a holiday weekend is longer still.
Check your ticket before you break ground. If an operator has not responded, do not assume a clean site and start digging. File a no-response ticket so the One-Call center and the Board of Public Utilities know the response did not happen. That is the mechanism, it exists for exactly this, and it also protects you if something goes wrong later.
Common questions
What happens if an excavator damages an unmarked utility in NJ? It depends what was hit. For gas, liquid petroleum or another hazardous liquid, N.J.A.C. 14:2-3.6 requires the excavator to call 911 immediately and then immediately report to the operator. For anything else, the excavator reports immediately to the operator and then immediately to the One-Call center. Those requirements apply whether or not the damage caused an emergency. A private line such as a dog fence, an irrigation system or a feed to a barn belongs to the property owner rather than a utility, and gets resolved between the excavator and the customer.
How long after calling NJ 811 can excavation begin? Not less than three business days after notice, and not more than 10 business days. Business days exclude weekends and holidays, so a Monday call means Friday. Check your ticket to confirm every operator actually responded, and file a no-response ticket if one did not, so the One-Call center and the Board of Public Utilities are aware.
Do I need to call 811 before digging on my own property? Almost always. New Jersey defines an excavator to include a homeowner. Routine residential maintenance with non-mechanized equipment is excluded, as is using a hand tool less than six inches deep to fix a sprinkler or locate a property marker. But tree and root removal, fence post driving, plowing in cable or pipe, boring and trenching are all named as excavation, and anything mechanized is covered. If a machine is involved, call.
Does a clean markout mean there is nothing buried there? No. Non-metallic water pipe installed before November 18, 1994 is exempt from the markout requirement under N.J.A.C. 14:2-4.1(b), because locators cannot reliably find old plastic. The operator must instead cooperate within three business days to help determine the location, including a site meeting and a search of their records. Private lines are not marked at all. Unpainted ground is not the same as empty ground.
What do I do if I find a utility buried too shallow? You can submit a dangerous condition reporting form to the One-Call center. The rule provides for it where a facility is, in the excavator's judgment, buried at a depth insufficient for safety, or where any condition around it could pose a danger.
Still not sure how this applies to your property? That is what a free on-site estimate is for. Call 862-268-2510 or tell us what is going on, and we will give you a straight answer, including when the answer is that you do not need us.
Sources
- N.J.A.C. 14:2-3.6, excavators, incident and damage reporting
- N.J.A.C. 14:2-3.1, notice of intent to excavate, timing
- N.J.A.C. 14:2-1.2, definitions of excavate, excavator and hand digging
- N.J.A.C. 14:2-4.1, operator applicability and the pre-1994 non-metallic water pipe exemption
- New Jersey One Call, 811
This is general information about New Jersey's damage prevention rules, not a substitute for the instructions of the emergency services or your utility on the day. If you have hit something and people are in danger, stop reading and call 911. Our own approach to markouts is on utility construction.