ATLANTA —
In a 91-second meeting Tuesday, the Public Service Commission voted to levy about $500,000 in fines against three-dozen or so companies, what insiders consider routine.
The firms are all guilty of violating the laws protecting underground pipes and wires belonging to public utilities. Last year, the commission received $6 million in fines, and that’s after giving a large discount to companies that agree to submit to training.
“We don’t want their money,” said Commissioner Doug Everett, chairman of the underground-utilities committee.
Instead, the commissioners say they just want to avoid service disruption and the dangers of cutting a live power line or flowing natural-gas main.
Georgia collects the second-most fines in the country, behind only California. If Tuesday’s list of fines wasn’t unusually long, most observers expect it will grow as the economy gathers momentum and construction activity increases.
The commission has three inspectors who determine fault when a utility reports a break. Fines are $10,000 per instance, but first-time offenders often avoid any penalty or just $2,000 if they let someone from the commission staff train their crew.
Georgia 811, a program funded by the state’s utilities, is designed to avoid accidents in the first place. It provides free training and free marking of buried utilities within 72 hours when contacted by phone, online or smartphone app. The law requires contractors — and homeowners — to “call before you dig.”
Private industry also offers training, such as part of the University of Georgia’s course for certified landscape professionals.
“We try to promote as much as we can so we can avoid the expense, and frankly the trouble,” said Chris Butts, interim executive director of the Georgia Green Industry Association.
Still, he said, accidents happen. For instance, one landscaper was fined after breaking a fiber-optic cable because the general contractor needed rush digging before a concrete pour. The landscaper had gotten the utilities marked where work was expected, but the new request was nearby, and the cable would have been missed if it hadn’t taken an unexpected turn to get around a buried bolder in the unmarked territory.
Commissioner Lauren “Bubba” McDonald said most companies try to comply, but a few are repeat offenders and get $15,000 fines. He’s frustrated that all of the money from the fines goes into the state treasury for legislators to appropriate as they choose rather than equipping the commission with added inspectors or experts to deal with rate increases and nuclear power-plant construction.
“We can’t get money across the street (at the Capitol) to get staff to go up against these giant utilities,” he said. “… We get zero.”