CHAPTER 78
HOUSE BILL No. 2743
An Act concerning the Kansas underground utility damage prevention
act; amending K.S.A.
1997 Supp. 66-1802 and 66-1810 and repealing the existing
sections.
Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Kansas:
Section 1. K.S.A. 1997 Supp. 66-1802 is hereby amended to
read as
follows: 66-1802. As used in this act:
(a) ``Damage'' means any impact or contact with an underground
fa-
cility, 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
pres-
ent 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, 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, elec-
tricity, communication, crude oil, refined or processed petroleum,
petro-
leum products or hazardous liquids; facility shall not include, any
pro-
duction petroleum lead lines, salt water disposal lines or
injection lines,
which are located on unplatted land or outside the corporate limits
of any
city.
(f) ``Marking'' means the use of stakes, paint or other
clearly identi-
fiable materials to show the field location of underground
facilities, in
accordance with the resolution adopted August, 1984, by the utility
lo-
cation coordination council of the American public work
association.
(g) ``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.
(g) (h) ``Notification center'' means
the statewide communication sys-
tem operated by an organization which has as one of its purposes
to
receive notification of planned excavation in the state from
excavators and
to disseminate such notification of planned excavation to operators
who
are members and participants.
(h) (i) ``Operator'' means any person
who owns or operates an un-
derground 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.
(i) (j) ``Preengineered project''
means a public project or a project
which is approved by a public agency wherein the public agency
respon-
sible 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
draw-
ing as specifications for the project.
(j) (k) ``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.
(k) (l) ``Person'' means any
individual, partnership, corporation, as-
sociation, franchise holder, state, city, county or any
governmental sub-
division or instrumentality of a state and its employees, agents or
legal
representatives.
(l) (m) ``Tolerance zone'' means the
area within 24 inches of the out-
side dimensions in all horizontal directions of an underground
facility.
(m) (n) ``Working day'' means every
day, except Saturday, Sunday or
a legally proclaimed local, state or federal holiday.
Sec. 2. K.S.A. 1997 Supp. 66-1810 is hereby amended to
read as
follows: 66-1810. When any contact with or damage to any
underground
facility occurs, the operator shall be informed immediately by the
exca-
vator. Upon receiving such notice, the operator
shall immediately shall
dispatch personnel to the location to provide necessary temporary
or per-
manent repair of the damage. If a serious electrical short
is occurring the
protective covering of an electrical line is penetrated or
dangerous gases
or fluids are escaping from a broken line, the excavator
shall immediately
shall inform emergency personnel of the municipality in
which such elec-
trical short or broken line is located.
Sec. 3. K.S.A. 1997 Supp. 66-1802 and 66-1810 are hereby
repealed.
Sec. 4. This act shall take effect and be in force from
and after its
publication in the statute book.
Approved April 7, 1998
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