Facility Owner

Facility Operators follow the APWA (American Public Works Association) standard to mark the locations of their underground facilities. The following colors are used:

RED – Electric Power Lines, Cables, Conduit and Lighting Cables
YELLOW – Gas, Oil, Steam, Petroleum or Gaseous Materials
ORANGE – Communication, Alarm or Signal Lines, Cables or Conduit
BLUE – Potable Water
PURPLE – Reclaimed Water, Irrigation and Slurry Lines
GREEN – Sewers and Drain Lines
WHITE – Proposed Excavation
PINK – Temporary Survey Markings

Locate Requests are NOT created after hours by Blue Stakes. If an emergency excavation needs to be completed after hours, you will need to contact each facility operator directly to request the area be marked or have them clear the area. To obtain a list of the impacted facilities use our Utility Contact Lookup link: https://ucl.bluestakes.org/. This is also accessible by clicking on the Utility Contact Lookup icon from within our Mobile App.

Enter the location information, use the tools provided to indicate the location on the map, and select “Emergency After Hours.” A popup will then provide a contact list of the numbers for the specific member facility operators that would need to be contacted directly after hours.

See General FAQ #14 for information about after-hours emergencies.

The facility operator/locator should communicate the delay with the excavator through an email, phone call, or both. The facility operator/locator may additionally post information on our Electronic Positive Response (EPR) system. Currently, participation in EPR is voluntary. To check the responses for your requests, go to: https://www.bluestakes.org/epr/. This is also accessible by clicking on the Positive Response icon or EPR Lookup icon from within our Mobile App. 

It is important to reach out to the excavator making the requests directly and express your concerns about these excessive requests for markings, where work appears to be complete.

Blue Stakes currently has over 600 participating facility owners/operators. There are large and small companies including gas, power, communications, water, sewer, municipalities, and more. Each participating member facility operator should ensure the facility lines that they own and maintain are located and marked within the described areas on Locate Request Tickets. Some of these member facility operators hire third party locating companies to do their required locating and marking on their behalf. 

A list of participating facility operators can be found here: Blue Stakes Members 

To facilitate safety and damage prevention, effective May 1, 2024, Utah State Law requires excavators to submit a No Response Notice (NRSP) on the current locate request if the excavator is aware of or observes indications of a facility that was not marked in the work area covered by a current locate request. The excavator is required to submit the NRSP notice to Blue Stakes before they can start digging and provide which facility operator(s) or facility type(s) have not responded or marked. Blue Stakes will only send the NRSP notice to those member facility operators/facility types indicated by the excavator. Facility Operators are required to respond and/or mark their facilities within 4 business hours of the NRSP notice. With the addition of this new NRSP ticket revision type, the 2nd Notice (2NDR) ticket revision type has been eliminated.