Have you ever come home to find a parade of little colorful flags and paint lining your yard?  If so, you have had a Miss Dig request placed for your property. 

The State of Michigan passed Public Act 174 of 2013, THE MISS DIG DAMAGE PREVENTION AND SAFETY ACT.  This law requires that all persons that will be digging into the ground with equipment that could damage any type of utility below, must call into the Miss Dig call center and have a ticket request placed to identify any utilities below.  This law also requires that all utility owners participate in the program. 

The City of Auburn Hills DPW participates by supplying information about our utility system and by responding to the ticket requests.  We have supplied the Miss Dig program with information regarding the City-owned water, sanitary, and storm infrastructure.  We respond to the ticket request by locating the City-owned utilities on the site that the work is to be performed at.  We use color coded flags and paint to identify those utilities. 

We, along with others such as Consumers Energy, DTE, and all the cable/ internet suppliers participate in protecting the utilities by marking the utility to prevent damage to the utility and causing an outage of service to those who use them. Each type of utility has been assigned a color that is used only for their type of utility.  Such as water is blue. So, before you dig, call Miss Dig and know what is below.

Tom Innes, Water Crew Leader, Department of Public Works