BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SB 119
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Date of Hearing: June 29, 2015
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON UTILITIES AND COMMERCE
Anthony Rendon, Chair
SB
119 (Hill) - As Amended June 16, 2015
SENATE VOTE: 24-11
SUBJECT: Protection of subsurface installations.
SUMMARY: This bill modifies "call before you dig" laws
governing excavations near underground pipelines, conduit, duct,
wire, or other structures (collectively known as subsurface
installations). Among other things, this bill enhances the
existing enforcement powers of specified state entities, revises
liability provisions that apply to the pre-excavation
notification and subsurface installation marking requirements
for operators and excavators, and establishes the California
Underground Facilities Safe Excavation Advisory Committee to
coordinate education and outreach, develop standards, and
investigate violations of laws pertaining to excavation.
Specifically, this bill:
1) Makes numerous findings and declarations regarding the
efficiency of regional notification centers; issues related
to safety; exemptions from contacting regional notification
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centers that may not have a basis in safety; coordination
needed among affected parties, including specifically the
Department of Transportation; recordkeeping; timely response
to requests for markings; the need for current markings;
timely response to requests for marking subsurface
installations; safety issues related to mismarked location of
subsurface installations; the need to monitor unregulated
behaviors that are suspected to be unsafe; specifies that the
exemption for landscaping with hand tools to depths of less
than 12 inches does not have an impact on safety; gas
corporations should collect data to inform future discussions
about exemptions from requirements to contact regional
notification centers; declares that California should have an
advisory committee to coordinate education efforts; study
excavation questions, develop standards for best practices,
and investigate when regional call centers are not notified;
and specifies that funding for the advisory committee should
be funded through fines levied on gas and electric
corporations for safety violations.
2) Specifies definitions for "abandoned subsurface
installation," "active subsurface installation," "delineate,"
"electronic positive response," "emergency," "unexpected
occurrence," "hand tool," "inactive subsurface installation,"
"legal excavation start date," "locate and field mark," "near
miss," "pavement," "positive response," "ticket," "tolerance
zone," and "working day."
3) Requires an excavator to delineate the area to be excavated
before notifying a regional notification center.
4) Specifies the amount of time before an excavation to
notify the regional call center.
5) Clarifies existing law with respect to an onsite meeting
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when excavation is proposed within ten feet of a high
priority subsurface installation.
6) Clarifies excavation tickets issued by regional notification
centers with respect to the start date and the number of days
the ticket is valid.
7) Specifies recordkeeping requirements.
8) Specifies marking, notification, field marks, and legal
start date and time.
9) Addresses communication requirements when addressing
subsurface installations not visible from the surface due to
pavement.
10)Establishes for compliance and noncompliance with provisions
of this statute without establishing burden of proof.
11)Establishes provisions specific to exemptions from
contacting a regional notification center for excavation on
residential property.
12)Establishes provisions specific to subsurface
installations located on agricultural property.
13)Specifies enforcement of specific provisions of the bill
with the CSLB, the California Public Utilities Commission
(CPUC), or Office of the State Fire Marshall (OSFM).
14)Establishes an advisory committee with specified membership,
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including appointments from each house of the Legislature,
within the CSLB, and specifies duties to identify education
and outreach needs, convene an annual meeting on safe
excavation, develop standards, and investigate violations of
this statute.
15)Specifies the advisory committee may authorize staff to use
compliance audits, including field audits, and investigations
of incidents and near-misses.
16)Requires gas corporations to collect information about
damage to subsurface installations until January 1, 2020,
claims filed by gas corporations against excavators, other
information the CPUC may require, and annually report to the
CPUC on excavation data and analysis.
17)Requires the CPUC to report to the Legislature on an
analysis of excavation damages.
18)Creates and specifies that funds collected from citations be
deposited in a Safe Energy Infrastructure and Excavation Fund
to cover administration costs of the advisory committee, an
education program, and a workforce training program.
EXISTING LAW:
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1)Authorizes licensing and regulation under the Contractors
State License Law by the CSLB within the Department of
Consumer Affairs. The CSLB is under the direction of the
registrar of contractors. (Business and Professions Code
Section 7000, et seq.)
2)Requires all owners of subsurface infrastructure (such as gas,
oil, and water pipes, electrical and telecommunications
conduits, etc., except the California Department of
Transportation, to participate in and fund regional
notification ("one-call") centers. (Government Code Section
4216.1)
3)Exempts owners of non-pressurized sewer lines and storm drains
from the requirement to become members of the one-call
centers. (Government Code Section 4216(l))
4)Requires persons performing excavations to call one-call
centers to have the locations of underground facilities marked
before starting an excavation (Government Code Section
4216.2), but exempts homeowners and other private property
owners from this requirement for excavations on their own
property. (Government Code Section 4216.8)
5)Requires owners of subsurface installations to mark their
underground facilities within two working days of receiving a
notification. (Government Code Section 4216.3)
6)Requires excavators to use hand tools within two feet on each
side of a marked line indicating a subsurface facility to
determine where that facility is before using any power
excavating equipment. (Government Code Section 4216.4)
7)Establishes a safety enforcement program at the CPUC
applicable to gas and electrical corporations. (Public
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Utilities Code Section 1702.5)
FISCAL EFFECT: Unknown.
COMMENTS:
1)Author's Statement: "On Friday, April 17, a front loader in
Fresno came into contact with a 12-inch high pressure natural
gas transmission pipe, causing an explosion that injured
fourteen people. One person died as a result, and - eight
weeks after the blast - one remains hospitalized. Accidents
such as this are the result of unsafe practices that people
undertake all the time. Roughly 7,000 of California's natural
gas pipelines are hit every year, and it is estimated that
roughly half of them occur because the excavator failed to use
the free 8-1-1 service so that pipes can be located and marked
before digging. The safety hazard associated with digging
into natural gas pipelines has hung over the Legislature for a
long time, at least since 2004, when five laborers were killed
in Walnut Creek when a petroleum pipeline exploded after it
was struck with a backhoe.
"The strategy that SB 119 takes to finally tackle this problem
is to improve enforcement, clarify the law, and develop a
venue for discussions to improve excavation safety. All of
the proposals included in the introduced version of the bill
came from the stakeholder group (which includes over 130 email
addresses)."
2)Excavation safety: Excavation activities accounted for more
than 25 percent of pipeline-related fatalities in the U.S.
between 2002 and 2011. Nationwide data provided by the Common
Ground Alliance, a national nonprofit created by the federal
pipeline safety regulator to promulgate best practices in safe
excavation, suggests that excavation in California is more
dangerous than in other states, largely due to a failure by
some excavators and owners of underground facilities to call
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before excavating. Data collected by the Pacific Gas &
Electric Company (PG&E) supports this conclusion. Contract
excavators have challenged this assertion, instead suggesting
that mismarked utilities are the greater danger.
On April 17, 2017, a 12-inch high-pressure natural gas
pipeline exploded in Fresno, injuring 14. The accident
remains under investigation, but a county worker was operating
a front-end loader within several feet of the pipeline at the
time of the explosion. Injured were the front loader
operator, several inmates from Fresno County Jail who were
working in the area, and a sheriff who pulled them away from
the blast. Three weeks later, one of the injured inmates
died.
3)Call-before-you-dig is a means of improving safety: Both the
National Transportation Safety Board and the federal pipeline
safety regulator, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety
Administration (PHMSA), have identified call-before-you-dig
laws as a means of improving excavation safety. PHMSA, in
adopting regulations requiring distribution pipeline companies
to develop comprehensive risk-based pipeline safety programs,
explored best practices in excavation enforcement, and its
working group found in 2005 that the states that have had the
most success house enforcement in a centralized enforcement
agency recommending the agency responsible for pipeline
safety.
4)Call-before-you dig enforcement: California relies on the
Attorney General and district attorneys to enforce the
one-call law, though regulatory authorities such as the CPUC,
the Office of the State Fire Marshall (OFSM), and CSLB have
broad jurisdiction over gas pipeline and electric operators,
hazardous liquid operators, and contractors, respectively, and
thus have the ability to enforce safe operations on those
entities within their jurisdictions.
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According to the author:
Their authorities have rarely been used except for a
recent CPUC investigation into PG&E recordkeeping practices
on its distribution system, which explores excavation
issues.
Sempra and PG&E have also begun making complaints to
CSLB, but CSLB does not yet have the experience and
capabilities to handle more than a handful of cases.
In a PHMSA rulemaking (PHMSA-2009-0192) to determine
criteria by which it is to evaluate state enforcement of
damage prevention laws, Sempra reports 7,574 "dig-ins" in
California in 2013, or nearly 21 per day, and that roughly
half of all dig-ins to its facilities have been when the
excavator has failed to call 8-1-1 to get the underground
facilities marked, which means that half of all dig-ins are
preventable.
California has experienced a number of near-miss incidents
(this is a partial list):
November 6, 2011: PG&E was conducting a water
pressure test on the gas pipeline that had exploded a year
earlier, south of the San Bruno explosion site in nearby
Woodside. The pipe ruptured, causing a mudslide that shut
down I-280 for four hours. A dent was found at the point
of rupture, caused by an unknown, unreported excavation
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accident.
June 28, 2012: Power pole work in San Joaquin County
caused the severing of an underground fiber optic cable,
resulting in a 911 outage as well as internet, land line,
and cellular service disruption in Amador County. Full
system function wasn't restored for more than 24 hours.
August 2, 2012: An excavator clipped a gas line with
a backhoe at the same intersection which had erupted in
the September 2010 explosion in San Bruno, prompting
evacuations. The contractor had failed to use proper
excavation techniques.
March 12, 2013: A Berkeley homeowner hired a day
laborer to do sewer work, who hit the gas line with a
pick, igniting the gas and burning the front of a home and
a van parked outside. No call was made to have gas lines
marked.
March 15, 2013: A subcontractor punctured a steel
pipe in Fresno, causing the evacuation of over 300 homes
and businesses. Excavation was faulty for numerous
reasons.
April 24, 2013: A pavement recycling vehicle hit a
3-inch natural gas line in Bakersfield, causing an
explosion that engulfed the vehicle in flames. No one was
injured. The excavator appeared to follow applicable laws
and protocols, but the gas line was much closer to the
road surface than expected. The pipeline operator
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maintains that hand-digging was required to locate the
pipe depth.
October 24, 2014: A farmer who was ripping a field
southwest of Bakersfield struck one of PG&E's backbone
transmission lines caused the fire department to create an
eight-square-mile "exclusion zone" that temporarily closed
schools and required sheltering-in-place.
February 28, 2015: A tractor putting in a road on
private property in Monterey struck a 10-inch high
pressure gas line, shutting down Highway 1 for three
hours. The gas did not ignite. No call had been made
to 811.
1)Stakeholder-driven process: Senator Hill convened a
stakeholder group consisting of dozens of organizations and
individuals. The bill was amended several times to improve
clarity and address additional concerns. As a result of the
most recent amendments, the Committee does not have support or
opposition representing the current language in the bill.
Stakeholders taking positions on prior versions of the bill
included: Agricultural Council of California, Associated
Generator Contractors of America, AT&T, California Association
of Realtors, California Association of Winegrape Growers,
California Citrus Mutual, California Cotton Ginners and
Growers Association, California Farm Bureau, California Fresh
Fruit Association, California Landscape Contractors
Association, California Legislative Conference of the
Plumbing, Heating and Piping Industry, California State
Council of Laborers, County of Los Angeles, County of Orange,
International Union of Operating Engineers, National
Electrical Contractors Association, PG&E, Sempra/SoCalGas,
Southern California Contractors Association, Underground
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Service Alert of Southern California, United Contractors,
Western Agricultural Processors Association, Western Growers,
and Western Line Constructors Chapter.
2)Advisory Committee authority: The advisory committee is
authorized to investigate possible violations of this article,
including complaints from affected parties and members of the
public. It is not clear where members of the public would
find out about this advisory committee or whether the
complaints filed with the advisory committee are instead of or
in addition to a complaint filed through the normal CSLB
complaint process. It is also unclear whether a complaint
found valid by the advisory committee would result in a
disciplinary action by the CSLB.
3)A dvisory Committee staff: As written, the bill is not clear
whether the staff authorized to perform audits are specific to
the committee or whether they are CSLB staff. The author may
wish to consider clarifying this in fiscal committee. The
bill does specify that the advisory committee is to be
assisted by CSLB staff.
4)Prior Legislation:
AB 811 (Lowenthal) 2013: Required the regional notification
centers (or "one-call" centers) to annually report on
subsurface facility damages voluntarily reported to those
centers from excavators and utilities. An earlier version
would have set education requirements as a condition of
obtaining a license from CSLB, but that requirement was
stripped from the bill in the Assembly. Chaptered by
Secretary of State - Chapter 250, Statutes of 2013.
AB 1514 (Lowenthal) 2012: This bill would have increased the
maximum fine for a violation of the "one-call" law from
$10,000 to $100,000 and would have placed the CPUC in charge
of investigating excavation damages and referring the
investigations to the Attorney General or a district attorney
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for action. Held in Assembly Appropriations Committee.
SB 1359 (Torlakson) 2006: Required onsite meetings between
excavators and operators when an excavation was to take place
near most dangerous lines, such as high-pressure gas and
petroleum lines and high-voltage electric lines. The bill
also required the notification to an operator in the case of
damage or the discovery of a prior damage, specified the
qualifications for locating underground infrastructure, and
added liability provisions. Chaptered by Secretary of State -
Chapter 651, Statutes of 2006.
AB 73 (Elder) 1989: Created California's one-call law,
requiring facility owners to participate in the one-call
notification centers, mandatory calling before excavation, use
safe excavation practices, and penalties for noncompliance.
Chaptered by Secretary of State - Chapter 928, Statutes of
1989.
5)Double Referred : This bill is double referred to the Assembly
Committee on Judiciary.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION:
Support
None on file
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Opposition
None on file
Analysis Prepared by:Sue Kateley / U. & C. / (916)
319-2083