HOUSE BILL REPORT

SSB 6703

As Amended by the House

BYSenate Committee on Energy & Utilities (originally sponsored by Senators Benitz and Madsen)

Changing provisions relating to underground facilities.

House Committe on Energy & Utilities

Majority Report:  Do pass with amendment. (13)

      Signed by Representatives Nelson, Chair; Todd, Vice Chair; Armstrong, Barnes, Brooks, Gallagher, Hankins, Jacobsen, Jesernig, May, Meyers, Unsoeld and S. Wilson.

House Staff:Fred Adair (786-7113)

AS PASSED HOUSE MARCH 6, 1988

BACKGROUND:

Utilities with underground facilities have primary responsibility for marking them when notified of planned excavations around the facilities.  Excavators are responsible for determining the placement of the underground facilities before digging and are required to use reasonable care to avoid damaging.  Where damage occurs as a result of failure to comply with statutory duties imposed on utilities and excavators, the party that failed to perform its duty is liable for damages.  Common law remedies for personal injury or for property are allowed.  Even with both parties performing according to law, the use of fiber-optic cables, a new technology, complicates excavation because of the small size, lack of protective armor, and fragility of fiber-optic cables.  Yet, armorizing or otherwise giving more protection to fiber-optic cables is currently uneconomical.  A compromise to enable excavators to acquire liability insurance at reasonable cost is to limit damage liability.

SUMMARY:

Where available, owners of underground facilities are required to subscribe to a one-number locator service.  Rates for this service for cable television companies will be based on the amount of their underground facilities.  Excavators who comply with statutory requirements are not liable for damages to fiber-optic cables other than the cost to repair them.

Fiscal Note:      Not Requested.

House Committee ‑ Testified For:    Dick Ducharme, Utility Contractors Association of Washington; Mark Perry, contractor; Duke Schaub, Association of General Contractors; Jack Doyle, Washington Independent Telephone Association; John Blake and Don Kuhns, Cascade Natural Gas (not pro or con, expressed some concerns); Larry Stevens, Continental Telephone; Pauline Thompson, General Telephone.

House Committee - Testified Against:      None Presented.

House Committee - Testimony For:    One-number locator service is available virtually statewide and underground facility owners should subscribe in order to minimize risk of excavation damage.  Fiber-optic cable is installed without protection and is easily damaged.  There is economic benefit to this low-cost form of cable laying, but the cables are hard to locate and easily damaged.  The situation is confused by presence of abandoned fiber-optic cables, giving false assurance of having located indicated fiber-optic cables.  Accordingly, excavators have found liability insurance difficult to obtain and seek to define an upper limit of damage.

House Committee - Testimony Against:      None Presented.