Modifies provisions relating to underground facilities
HB 752 revises Missouri’s underground facility damage-prevention law, commonly known as the “one-call” or utility-locate framework. The bill repeals and reenacts multiple sections of Chapter 319 to update definitions, procedures, and responsibilities for excavators, underground facility owners, and the statewide notification center. It expands and clarifies terms such as excavation, underground facility, best practices, electronic whitelining, trenchless excavation, and detectible underground location devices, and it adds new concepts like locator wire, locator strip, and start date of work.
The bill also strengthens pre-excavation and locate procedures. It requires notice to the notification center before excavation, sets timelines for responses and remarking, allows electronic notice and electronic whitelining, and adds special rules for trenchless excavation and sewer service connections. It creates a new requirement that, beginning August 28, 2025, most new and active underground facilities installed on real property must include a detectible underground location device unless already electronically detectable, with limited exceptions for certain deep sewer installations. The bill also updates reporting, recordkeeping, and board governance for the notification center and requires annual damage reporting by electric, gas, and pipeline facility owners.
HB 752 would substantially amend Chapter 319, RSMo, by replacing several existing underground-facility provisions with a modernized damage-prevention regime. It affects excavators, utility and pipeline owners, sewer system owners, the statewide notification center, and contractors involved in locating and marking underground infrastructure. The bill would impose new installation standards for future underground facilities, expand notice and marking obligations, and formalize electronic tools and mapping methods for locating work areas. It also preserves and clarifies liability rules, including rebuttable presumptions of negligence for failures by excavators or facility owners to comply with notice and marking duties.
The available record shows no committee transcript or recorded votes, so there is no direct evidence of debate or partisan division in the materials provided. Based on the bill text, the measure appears oriented toward technical modernization and damage prevention rather than a controversial policy shift. Its structure suggests an effort to improve coordination between excavators and utility owners, reduce utility strikes, and incorporate newer locating technologies.
The main points of potential contention are the bill’s expanded compliance obligations and the shift toward more detailed locate and marking requirements. Excavators may be concerned about stricter notice rules, remarking costs, and the requirement to use best practices such as hand digging or soft digging when possible. Underground facility owners may view the bill’s new detectible-device mandate and reporting requirements as operationally burdensome, while sewer system owners may focus on the added duty to identify sewer service connections for trenchless excavation. Another possible issue is the bill’s liability framework, which continues to create rebuttable presumptions of negligence for noncompliance by both excavators and facility owners.