Safety Tips for Spring

JOLIET, Ill., March 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Spring marks the arrival of the digging season and JULIE, Inc. (JULIE) plays a vital role in protecting communities in Illinois.  The free service is intended to keep homeowners and contractors safe from personal injury and communities free of utility damage and inconvenient outages.

To ensure that underground utility lines in the work area are marked, simply call 8-1-1 or visit illinois1call.com to submit a locate request to JULIE at least two working days before digging.  JULIE, Inc. will arrange for its member utility operators to have the underground lines at the project site marked, free of charge, so that homeowners and professional excavators can dig safely.  

"Professional locators from local member utility companies visit the dig site to mark the approximate location of underground utility lines with spray paint or flags," said Kevin Chmura, director of public relations for JULIE, Inc.  "As an important personal and home safety reminder, these locators rarely need access into your home to complete a locate request and should always have proper identification clearly visible. JULIE, Inc. personnel never visit dig sites and do not locate any underground lines."

With a growing trend of do-it-yourselfers focusing on outdoor beautification projects, types of projects that require notifying JULIE include, but are not limited to, planting trees, bushes or shrubs; putting up a fence or tent; installing a swing set, a mail box post or water feature such as a pool, pond or fountain; building a deck; or preparing a new garden or landscape area.

JULIE's call center agents are available to receive and process requests 24 hours a day, seven days a week at either 8-1-1 or 800-892-0123. E-Request, a free, web-based program for homeowners with Internet access who prefer to enter their own utility locate requests via www.illinois1call.com is also a popular option.

Based in Joliet, the not-for-profit organization represents 1,780 members and annually receives 1 million locate requests. Because one call to JULIE results in communication with multiple member utility companies, notifications to JULIE, Inc. last year resulted in 5.8 million messages being transmitted to members.  JULIE neither owns nor marks any underground lines.

For a copy of JULIE's Homeowner's Guide, an explanation of the color-code markings and information about the one-call process, visit www.illinois1call.com.

SOURCE JULIE, Inc.