Idaho Bills

Amends existing law to define terms and to provide for who shall and shall not locate and mark service laterals.

Amends existing law to define terms, to revise provisions regarding locating and marking underground facilities, to revise provisions regarding compensation for failure to comply, and to revise a provision regarding the duties of underground facility owners and excavators.

Idaho Code section 55-2205(2) states, "If there are identified but unlocatable underground facilities, the owner of such facilities or the owner's agent shall locate and mark the underground facilities in accordance with the best information available to the owner of the underground facilities and with reasonable accuracy as defined in section 55-2202(15), Idaho Code." Idaho Code section 55-2202(9) defines an identified but unlocatable underground facility as "an underground facility which has been identified but cannot be located withreasonableaccuracy."Bydefinition,anidentifiedbutunlocatableundergroundfacilitycannotbelocated with reasonable accuracy as required by Idaho Code section 55-2205(2). This legislative proposal will correct this discrepancy and require locatable underground facilities to be marked with reasonable accuracy, aswastheinitialintentofthestatute. ThislegislativeproposalwillalsoreviseIdahoCodesection55-2205(4) to align it with changes to Idaho Code section 55-2205(2). Idaho Code section 55-2208(5) requires that "[u]nderground facility owners and excavators who observe, suffer or cause damage to an underground facility or observe, suffer or cause excavator downtime . . . shall report such information to the board in accordance with the rules promulgated by the board." This requirement may cause duplicative reporting of the same incident by both underground facility owners and excavators. The Damage Prevention Board (Board) and stakeholders believe underground facility owners are best situated to report damage to their underground facilities and excavators are best situated to report downtime they suffer due to violations of chapter 22, title 55, Idaho Code. Accordingly, the Board and stakeholders believe only underground facility owners should be required to report damage to underground facilities and only excavators should be requiredtoreportexcavatordowntime. Thislegislativeproposalwilleliminatepotentialdoublereportingby requiringonlyundergroun