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from the desk of
Brent Saltzman
It seems the norm now here at Louisiana 811 that we have new developments and more changes taking place. Each change is for the betterment of our program and that is what we continue to strive to do.
One of the latest developments is that we are supporting a bill (HB
397) in the legislature that will benefit not only utility/facility owners and operators but excavators as well. This bill outlines a Large Project Excavation & Demolition and defines marine excavation activity. Furthermore, it extends the life of marine excavation tickets to 30 days to align with the existing ticket life for agriculture and forestry work.
This bill was the result of a lot of hard work by the Dig Law Advisory Committee and the LA 811 Board of Directors. We have been discussing the need to address large projects for years and, as of this writing, the
bill has passed the House of Representatives and the Senate Commerce Committee. If passed by the full Senate and signed by Governor Landry, it will become effective January 1, 2025. If the bill passes, we will include it in the next issue.
We are extremely excited to announce that we have hired another team member to assist with our damage prevention efforts! This person is bilingual and possesses many strong qualities to help support our mission of protecting our member’s assets, the public and the environment. More details about our new hire will be available soon so follow us on social media to learn more.
Another exciting addition you can check out is our new Dashboard tool which can be viewed on our website homepage at louisiana811.com. This tool will give you the ability to see real-time data of total tickets for the State of Louisiana and allow users to query data by Parish, ticket type and date ranges amongst other things. We are anxious for users to look at this tool, try it out, and provide your feedback. We feel it will be helpful in discovering where the tickets are coming from and what type of tickets are being submitted.
Finally, we successfully hosted the Global Excavation Safety Conference in New Orleans where attendees learned useful information about our industry. This conference, along with the Common Ground Alliance Conference we recently attended, has extremely valuable functions to educate attendees and aid in damage prevention efforts. We highly encourage our stakeholders to attend such events as well as our annual Damage Prevention Summit to learn how to increase your knowledge base to help reduce damages.
Until next time, God bless you, and stay safe!
Brent Saltzman Executive Director Louisiana 811
2024, Issue 2
Louisiana 811
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