November 12, 2003 10:00 AM
· Call to Order
Chairman Bill Deal with the City of Charlotte welcomed everyone to the meeting. Group introductions were made.
Minutes of the last meeting were read and approved.
* Old Business
a. Treasures Report . George Glenn reported the current NCUCC balance is $ 334.20. There are no outstanding checks or invoices.
b. Bill asked for volunteers to host the 2004 NCUCC meetings.
1. January 16, 2004 - NC One Call Center At The Grandover Resort & Conference Center.
2. March 09, 2004- PSNC Energy Raleigh, NC Sandra Johnson & Glenn Flowers
3. May 19, 2004 - NC/SCUCC 2004 Joint Seminar Wilmington, NC
4. July 12, 2004- Progress Energy Ashville, NC Paulette Warren
5. September 14, 2004 Duke Power Hickory NC
6. November 09, 2004 Need a host for this date
c. Committee Reports.
Lola Ausby reported on the NC/SCUCC 2004 Joint Seminar. This event will be held May 19, 2004 thru May 21, 2004. The committee agreed that registration would be $50.00 in advance and $60.00 at the door. If you bring a guest this would be an additional $40.00. The vendor tables will be $350.00 by March 2004. After this date the cost would be $450.00. We plan to send out information on the NC/SCUCC 2004 Joint Seminar in December 2003. The registration package will go out in January 2004. Lola request suggestions for a theme for this Joint Seminar. Danny Harris gave Lola a newspaper with information on a theme he had from his area. You can e-mail her with your ideas. Glenn Flowers suggest we use something with damage prevention in it. We need to put this theme on our giveaway bags.
Aydren Flowers will get together next week with the committee to go over potential key speakers for this event.
Bill Deal informs us that Mark Price has resigned from the vendor/sponsors committee. We need sponsors for Breakfast, Lunch and Breaks.
Bill would like for us to look at the shirt he is wearing today. Could we have this type shirt printed with the Annual NC/SCUCC Joint Seminar on it for the Joint Seminar in May 2004? How will we pay for it? Stephanie Saint Sing and Bill will get together to discuss this and bring back the information to our next meeting.
Bill informs us that everyone should have a copy of the NCUCC By-Laws. Do we need to update or make changes? Read over the BY-Laws bring any ideas to the next meeting January 16, 2004 in Greensboro.
* New Business
a. NC DOT - Aydren Flowers has TIP Books with him if you need them. NCDOT is implementing the NC Moving Ahead project. This will be managed by our local district engineer. If you want to see a list for your area go to the Internet and look up ncdot.org. On the front page you will see MCMA. Click on that. It will take you where you need to be. These projects will be handled by local divisions. These projects should be done in two years. We have a major TIP project we are letting coming up in December. This will be about 200 million. This project is not as larges as the one we had last July which was 300 million dollars. Next years projects will not be quite as large as this year.
DOT is under going some reorganization. We now have DOT Program Delivery. We have new people on board.
David West discusses Encroachment agreements. Salisbury and Albemarle require encroachment forms. This is not being done State wide. We are working on not requiring forms . Check list to be involved in encroachments.
NC One Call Center – Wendy Bullins with NC One-Call Center reports that the NC One –Call Center will celebrate 25 years of service in October 2004. They will have Open House on January 16, 2004 from 1:00 to 4:00 PM . This will be a special event this year. Everyone is invited. This will be held after the NC One-Call Center Board Meeting. The annual NC One-Call Board meeting will be held at the Grandover Resort and Conference Center in Greensboro. The meeting will begin at 9:30 AM. The NCUCC will meet after the board meeting in the same room as the NC One-Call Board meeting .
Wendy gave the ticket report from the One Call Center. Ticket request are up 9% from 2002 to 2003.
George Glenn tells us that there are 47 local UCC’s covering 73 counties. There are 100 counties in North Carolina. 92% of 1.1 million request comes from counties that have UCC’s. If you have a facility in your county that does not have a UCC you need to address this issue. Wendy and Stephanie will help you get a local UCC organized. Stephanie explains if you will go to the NC One-Call web site and click on county you will see a little man says no UCC. Click on the county.
Reports.
Power Companies- Paulette Warren with Progress Energy reports that her supervisor in Florida, David Salanitro has resigned. He has gone on to bigger and better things.
Keith Reid with Fayetteville Power informs us that Friday before Labor Day a dump truck parked on a hill and the driver set the emergency brake. The brakes failed. The dump truck traveled about 1000 feet into Keith’s livining room. This caused about $40,000.00 to my house. His children were not home and his wife was in another area of the house. It was Fayetteville City policy not to choke the wheels. They are now purchasing chokes for the truck wheels.
Gas Companies- Glenn Flowers with PSNC Energy informs us that he keeps up with the incidents that occur in his area. 60% of the damages to gas lines, the contractor digging did not call in a locate request. In September we had 36 hit lines. 26 did not have locate tickets. 3 had expired. We have about 2.8 hits per 1000 tickets. We would like to have less than that. There’s still a lot of educating out there to do. The Wake County UCC is still working on it. PSNC Energy has 30 miles of cast iron pipe that we are trying to replace in Raleigh. We have replaced about 6 miles this month in Raleigh.
Teresa VonCannon with Piedmont Natural Gas reports that her company was having a lot of large damages. This was due to mislocates or lines not being located. The locators had a large amount of locate tickets. Too many for one locator to complete. Once Piedmont natural Gas started to bill the contract locating company the damages went down.
Jim Adkins with Piedmont Natural Gas tells us that Dick Carter sent a note about three crossing of railroad. We refused to pay the $1,800.00 fee they requested for one of them. We are disputing fees that Northern/Southern Railroad charge to cross the railroad. We found that the railroad does not own the right of way on two of these crossings. We are getting ready to start condemnations for these sites. We are working to negotiate these fees. We did have a railroad crossing in Burke County that we were able to work with. We were charged reasonable fees. We plan to buy a piece of property that CSX has an easement on. We will have a challenge there.
Telecommunications No Report
Catv - No Report.
There was a concern that Sprint, Bellsouth, Verizon and Catv was not represented here today. Bill Deal will send out a letter to encourage the companies to attend the NCUCC. George Glenn also will talk with them.
Railroads – No Report
Contractors – Kevin Hisman with CLS reports that sprinkler companies are using orange paint. Local police was using orange paint to mark crime scenes. Our Locators are giving away white paint. They keep white paint on their trucks to give to people that are using orange paint. We respond to tickets that are called into through the NC One-Call Center. That is the business that my company is in. If we could get everyone to call in tickets there would be less damages.
Someone asked the question “Who digs without calling in a Locate?”
Sandra tells us that Concrete Contractors grading to pour sidewalks and driveways. Developers hire these contractors to perform work after the utilities are in the ground Glenn flowers adds we also have Plumbers and Electricians and Landscape Companies.
The NC One–Call Center keeps records of tickets that are called back to the One-Call Center because they do not see the utilities located. After the third call NC One-Call begins tracking these repeat calls. In 2002 we had 650 complaints from January to September. In 2003 for the same period of time we had 4500 complaints. The NC One-Call Center has dedicated a full time employee to take these complaints. George is very unhappy that the One-Call Center has to have an employee track these tickets after they have been called back in numerous times. George will continue to share this information. It will ultimately cost people a lot of money.
Local UCC’s - Kevin Johnson chairman of the Cabarrus /Rowan County UCC reports on the Breakfast they held at the Holiday Inn in Salisbury. Teresa is the co-chair. Damages are down in our area.
Lola Ausby reports on the UCC in Roanoke Rapids. This is new to our area. We represent Halifax and Northampton counties. We have been together for about two years. We had 25 people to attend our first Breakfast. Thank you Wendy for giving gifts and all the work you do.
Kevin Hisman chairman of the Wake County UCC reports that we held our annual Breakfast on October 09,2003 at the Golden Corral in Raleigh. George Glenn hosted this event. We had 125 people to attend. We had some excellent speakers that volunteered there time to speak on Safety First and Damage Prevention. The Wake County UCC just held a Safety meeting with Clancey and Theys in Raleigh. They damaged three gas lines within three months without locate tickets. Sometimes when a contractor damages a utility line we will negotiate the billing of damages for a Tailgate Safety Meeting.
Lola gave a presentation on the destruction left behind by hurricane Isabel. Lola had photos and some slides to show us of the destruction. Dominion had 1.8 million customers without power. Power was restored in two weeks and the estimated cost was 128 million dollars. Dominion had a total workforce of 12,500 employees and contractors working on the restoration.
Respectfully submitted by
Sandra Johnson
PSNC Energy
600 W. Cabarrus St.
Raleigh, NC 27603
919-836-2421