What a locate request actually does
Calling 811, or submitting a request through Colorado 811's online system, notifies every utility company with underground infrastructure in the area, including gas, electric, water, and communications lines, to come mark the location of their buried lines on the property before any digging happens. It is a free service, and by law it has to happen before excavation of essentially any kind, not just work explicitly involving gas lines.
The process typically takes a few business days from request to markings being completed, which is why it needs to be built into a project's timeline from the start rather than requested the day before digging is supposed to begin.
Why this corridor treats it as absolutely non-negotiable
In April 2017, a home explosion in Firestone, roughly seven miles from Erie, killed two people after natural gas migrated into the home's basement through a severed, improperly abandoned flowline connected to a nearby oil and gas well. The National Transportation Safety Board's subsequent investigation determined the line had most likely been cut during the home's original construction years earlier, with no record of that cut having occurred, meaning the danger sat undetected underground for years.
That investigation directly led to significantly stricter statewide rules on flowline abandonment, mapping, and locate requirements. For homeowners and plumbers working anywhere in this corridor, including Erie, Firestone, Frederick, and Dacono, that history is the reason a locate before any digging is treated as an absolute requirement rather than a bureaucratic formality that gets skipped when a job seems routine.
What this means for a routine home project
Even a project that seems entirely disconnected from oil and gas history, running a new gas line to an outdoor fire pit, relocating a line during a kitchen remodel, or repairing a suspected leak, requires the same locate process, because there is no way to visually confirm what legacy infrastructure might be present underground without it. Skipping this step to save a few days on a project timeline is exactly the kind of shortcut the 2017 investigation identified as a preventable failure point.
What happens if a locate gets skipped and something goes wrong
Beyond the obvious safety risk, skipping a required locate before excavation carries real legal and financial exposure. Colorado law holds excavators responsible for damage to unmarked utility lines when a locate request was never made, which can mean liability for repair costs, service disruption to neighboring properties, and in a worst case, the kind of catastrophic outcome the 2017 Firestone investigation documented in painful detail.
None of this is meant to make routine gas work sound alarming; the locate process itself is simple, free, and just requires building a few business days of lead time into project planning. The risk exists specifically in skipping that step, not in the work itself.
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CALL NOW(720) 698-9956How to actually submit a locate request
Colorado 811 requests can be submitted online through the Colorado 811 website or by calling 811 directly from anywhere in the state, and the process asks for the property address, the type of work planned, and the approximate area to be excavated. Most residential requests are straightforward and take only a few minutes to submit, with the actual site marking typically completed within the required notice period afterward.
What counts as excavation for locate purposes
The threshold for requiring a locate is lower than many homeowners assume. It's not limited to trenching a long run for a new line; even a fence post hole, a deck footing, or planting a tree deep enough near a suspected utility path technically qualifies as excavation requiring a locate first, since underground lines can run at shallower depths than expected in some areas.
What happens on the day of the actual mark-out
Utility locators typically mark underground lines using color-coded paint or flags directly on the ground surface, following a national color code, yellow for gas and oil lines, so a homeowner can visually confirm what has been marked before digging begins. It's worth photographing the marked yard before any digging starts, both as a personal record and in case marks fade or get disturbed before excavation actually happens.
If a planned dig area shows no visible utility marks at all after the locate window has passed, that should be confirmed as an intentional all-clear rather than assumed, since a rare miscommunication is always possible and a quick call to double-check costs nothing compared to the risk of proceeding on an unconfirmed assumption.
Who actually pays for the locate service
The cost of locating and marking utility lines is covered by the utility companies themselves as a standard part of their operating obligations, not charged back to the property owner or contractor requesting the locate. This funding structure is part of why the free-to-request design has held up as a workable statewide system for decades, since it removes cost as a reason anyone might be tempted to skip the step.
It's also worth knowing that a locate covers public utility infrastructure up to the property's service connection point; any private lines a homeowner has run themselves on their own property, an irrigation line to a detached shed, for example, are the homeowner's own responsibility to locate and are not covered by the 811 process.
The locate process, step by step
- Submit a locate request through Colorado 811, online or by calling 811, before any digging is scheduled
- Allow the required business days for utility companies to mark all underground lines
- Confirm all expected utility types have been marked before excavation begins
- Proceed with digging only within the marked, cleared area
- Keep the request confirmation on file, since it may be needed for permit or inspection purposes