Directional drilling by state
Directional Drilling Insurance in Maine
What Maine law actually does to a fiber bore — a wait rule that ends whichever comes first, an operator who must tell you whether its line is deep enough, and a missing ticket that becomes prima facie negligence.
Almost every liability question in Maine’s excavation statute is answered by a clock. Whether you may start is decided by which of two things happened first. Whether a strike is yours is decided by whether the locate arrived on time and identified the line. And whether the argument starts against you is decided by whether you called at all.
That makes a Maine claim file unusually simple to build and unusually easy to lose: the documents that matter are timestamps. What follows is 23 M.R.S. §3360-A as it bears on a fiber bore. §3360-A runs on timestamps. What those timestamps are recording is on the Directional Drilling Insurance pillar and the pollution liability page.
Boring in Maine? Your right to start ends whichever comes first — the marks, or three business days.
Get a Free QuoteThree business days, thirty calendar days
Each excavator must notify the system of the location of the intended excavation at least 3 business days but not more than 30 calendar days prior to commencement.
The units are not the same at each end, and that is the part crews misread. The floor is in business days, so a Thursday call does not mature over a weekend. The ceiling is in calendar days, so a ticket pulled a month ahead of a job that subsequently slips expires on the calendar regardless of how many working days have passed. A program that plans both ends in one unit will lose tickets it believed were live.
On the operator’s side the response is staged. The operator must respond as to its facilities in the location where excavation will first be made within two full business days, and as to the remaining facilities within a reasonable time thereafter. So the first stretch of a route is served faster than the rest by design, which is worth knowing when sequencing a long build: the front of the job has a hard deadline behind it and the back of the job has a standard.
Whichever occurs earlier
The rule that governs the start of work is short and it runs in the contractor’s favor more often than not. The excavator shall wait until the underground facilities are marked, or three business days from the date of notification, whichever occurs earlier, before commencing the excavation.
Most states make the wait a fixed period to be served out whatever comes back. Maine makes the marking and the clock alternatives. A crew whose facilities are all marked on the first day may begin on the first day. A crew that has heard nothing at all may still begin once three business days have run.
What the section does not allow is starting before either has happened, and it attaches a consequence rather than a penalty: an excavator who does not wait until the facilities are marked or three business days from notification, whichever occurs earlier, is liable for all the damage that follows. That is a liability rule, not an administrative one, and it operates whether or not anyone was careless.
The operator has to answer a question about depth
This is the obligation that separates Maine from every other state examined for this site. The owner or operator of each underground facility shall, within three business days, determine and notify the excavator whether the depth of its facility is sufficient to avoid damage.
Read what that asks for. It is not a request the excavator may make, and it is not a depth reading the operator may supply if convenient. It is a determination the operator is required to make and to communicate — a judgment about whether its own line sits deep enough to survive the work proposed.
For a directional bore that answer changes the plan rather than informing it. A facility the operator has told you is not deep enough to avoid damage is a crossing to be redesigned, potholed or hand-exposed before the drill approaches it. And the fact that the operator gave that answer — or failed to give it within three business days — is precisely the kind of documentary fact that decides the liability questions further down this page.
Two provisions that decide who pays
Section 3360-A allocates a strike through a pair of provisions that mirror each other, and both turn on the excavator’s own compliance.
The shield. Under subsection 6, if an excavator complies with subsection 3, and if the required information is not provided within the time specified or fails to identify the location of the underground facilities as required, then an excavator damaging or injuring those facilities is not liable for any damage or injury caused by the excavation, except on proof of negligence.
Note the order of operations. The shield is not available to a crew that skipped the notice or jumped the wait — compliance with subsection 3 is its precondition. Where it does apply it does not apportion or reduce; it removes liability altogether unless the claiming party can prove negligence, which is a substantially heavier burden than proving that a line was struck.
The mirror. Under subsection 6-B, an excavation made without the excavator providing any or all of the notices required by the section, that results in any damage to an underground facility, is prima facie evidence in any civil or administrative proceeding that the damage was caused by the negligence of the excavator.
Prima facie evidence establishes the point unless it is answered, so the practical effect is that the contractor begins already carrying the burden of coming forward. And the words “any or all” matter: a partial notification failure is inside the subsection, not merely a total one.
Put the two together and the statute reduces to a single question asked of the crew’s own paperwork. Comply, and a bad or missing locate leaves the other side to prove negligence. Do not comply, and a strike is presumed to be your negligence. Both answers are decided by records made before anything went wrong.
A thousand dollars, ten thousand on a repeat — and a payment plan
Under subsection 6-C the Public Utilities Commission may, in an adjudicatory proceeding, impose an administrative penalty on a person who violates the subsection. The penalty may not exceed $1,000, except that if the person has been found in violation within the prior 12 months the penalty may not exceed $10,000. Those penalties are expressly in addition to any other remedies or forfeitures provided by law.
Then a provision that appears in very few statutes of this kind: the Commission shall allow a qualified person who is assessed an administrative penalty to pay the penalty through a payment plan. Shall, not may. For a small crew a ten-thousand-dollar assessment and a ten-thousand-dollar demand are different events, and the statute has separated them.
One point of housekeeping, because it matters when reading older guidance. Subsection 6-A, Forfeitures, has been repealed. Material written against it is describing a provision that no longer exists, and nothing on this page rests on it.
What the statute leaves out
A narrow set of work sits outside the section. Under subsection 5-K a person is exempt for grading activities on private roads where the activity is limited to shaping, maintaining or scraping a road surface or shoulder for proper drainage and the depth is no deeper than six inches measured from the surface before the work begins. Both conditions have to hold; neither alone is enough.
Separately, the section carries a regime for qualified grading activity on unpaved public ways, under which a licensing authority notifies the system and the owners of facilities in the requested road. That regime introduces shallow-depth facilities — defined as underground facilities located at an insufficient depth to allow qualified grading activity — and provides that a licensing authority may require the owner to lower or otherwise move such a facility in accordance with applicable law and the terms of its license.
For a fiber contractor the relevance is indirect but real: it tells you that Maine has already legislated for plant sitting shallower than the surface work above it expects, which is the same condition that makes a bore dangerous.
A file made of timestamps
The contractors who reach us in Maine are usually mid-project, holding a certificate a prime has refused and an agent who cannot explain why re-issuing it will not help. What decides money here is a set of timestamps. Because subsection 6 gives a complying crew a negligence-only defense while subsection 6-B turns a missing notice into prima facie negligence, and because the right to start ends at the marks or three business days whichever is earlier, the file that matters was created before the drill turned. Keep the notification time, the marking time and the operator’s depth answer together.
Pollution liability sits outside §3360-A entirely. The section governs damage to underground facilities and the penalties for causing it; drilling fluid surfacing into a stream, a tidal reach or a wetland is an environmental loss the general liability form excludes, and no compliance shield reaches it. Contractors equipment matters because the staged operator response — two full business days for the first location, a reasonable time for the rest — puts the back of a long route on a softer deadline than the front. General liability is specified against the contract, and here the contract is doing more of the work than usual, for the reason below.
The question this page does not answer
Most state pages on this site work a second axis: what the state’s anti-indemnity statute does to the clause in your subcontract. This one does not, and the reason is worth stating rather than leaving as a gap.
We have not located a Maine anti-indemnity statute — no provision voiding or limiting an indemnity clause in a construction contract. That sentence reports the result of a search and nothing more. It is not a finding that no such statute exists anywhere in Maine law, because that is a negative retrieval cannot establish; it can only be assumed, and assuming it is how a contractor comes to believe a protection exists, or does not, on no evidence either way.
And we are not going to fill the space with common law. In some states there is a judicial rule of construction that does much of the work a statute would — Pennsylvania has one, and our page there names it, cites it, and identifies the court that laid it down, because it was retrieved and read. We have not done that research for Maine, and describing a rule we have not verified would be inventing one to make this section feel complete.
So what we can tell you is bounded and, we think, still useful. On the evidence we have, your Maine subcontract is governed by its own terms rather than cut back by a statute we have found. That makes the indemnity article and the insurance exhibit the operative documents, and it makes reading them before signature the step that protects you — not relying on a statutory floor we cannot show you.
§3360-A turns a Maine claim into a question about timestamps, and timestamps are a record of one bore. The account around it is on our Maine fiber contractor insurance page.
Why Fiber Optic Guard Insurance
What we actually do on a Maine file: capture the notification timestamp, the marking timestamp and the operator’s depth determination as one record, because subsections 6 and 6-B both turn on them; check that the crew waited until the marks or three business days, whichever came earlier, since starting before either makes the damage liability yours outright; plan the front of a route against the two-full-business-day response and the remainder against a reasonable time; diary the ticket against the thirty-calendar-day ceiling rather than a working-day count; and read the subcontract as the operative document, since we have not located a Maine statute narrowing it. If a prime has sent a broad indemnity clause, send it here before signature.
Learn more
The operating model and its coverage
Other fiber operating models
Maine
Primary sources cited on this page
Frequently asked questions about Maine directional drilling insurance
Does Maine’s damage prevention law cover buried fiber?
Yes, by its own definition. 23 M.R.S. §3360-A defines an underground facility as any item of personal property buried or placed below ground for use in connection with the storage or conveyance of water, sewage, electronic, telephonic or telegraphic communications, electric energy, oil, gas, liquefied propane gas or other substances — including, but not limited to, pipes, sewers, conduits, cables and valves. Communications is named in the protected purposes and conduit and cable are named among the items, so both the plant a fiber crew places and the plant it is most likely to encounter sit inside the section. No inference has to be drawn on either side of the bore.
How much notice does Maine require before a bore?
At least three business days, but not more than thirty calendar days, before commencement. The units differ deliberately at each end: the floor is measured in business days, so a Thursday call does not mature across a weekend, while the ceiling is measured in calendar days, so a ticket pulled a month ahead of a job that then slips expires on the calendar rather than on the working schedule. Crews that plan both ends in the same units lose tickets they believed were live. The notice goes to the system, identifying the location of the intended excavation.
When can I actually start digging in Maine?
When the facilities are marked, or when three business days have run from notification — whichever occurs earlier. That formulation is unusual and it works in the excavator’s favor. In most states the wait is a fixed period you serve out regardless of what comes back. In Maine the clock and the marking are alternatives, so a crew whose facilities are all marked on day one may begin on day one, and a crew that has heard nothing may still begin when the three business days have run. What the section does not permit is starting before either condition is met: an excavator who does not wait until the facilities are marked or three business days from notification, whichever occurs earlier, is liable for the resulting damage.
Does the operator have to tell me how deep its line is?
It has to tell you something more useful than a depth. Under §3360-A the owner or operator of each underground facility must, within three business days, determine and notify the excavator whether the depth of its facility is sufficient to avoid damage. That is a judgment the operator is required to make and communicate, not merely a measurement it may supply if asked — and we have not encountered the equivalent obligation in any other state examined for this site. For a directional bore the answer changes the plan: a facility the operator has told you is not deep enough to avoid damage is a crossing to be redesigned, and the fact that the operator said so is a document worth keeping. Separately, an operator must respond as to facilities in the location where excavation will first be made within two full business days, and as to the remaining facilities within a reasonable time thereafter.
If a line was never marked and I hit it, am I liable?
Not without proof of negligence, provided you complied. Section 3360-A(6) provides that if an excavator complies with subsection 3, and if the information required is not provided within the time specified, or if the information provided fails to identify the location of the underground facilities as required, then an excavator damaging or injuring underground facilities is not liable for any damage or injury caused by the excavation except on proof of negligence. Read the condition first: the shield is available only to a crew that complied with the notice and wait requirements. Where it applies, it does not merely reduce liability — it removes it, unless the party claiming can prove the crew was negligent, which is a materially harder task than proving a line was struck.
And if I never called at all?
Then the statute decides the negligence question before anyone argues it. Section 3360-A(6-B) provides that an excavation made without the excavator providing any or all of the notices required by the section, that results in any damage to an underground facility, is prima facie evidence in any civil or administrative proceeding that the damage was caused by the negligence of the excavator. Be precise about what that is: prima facie evidence establishes the fact unless it is answered, so the burden of coming forward shifts to the contractor. It is lighter than a rule deeming the conduct negligent outright and heavier than one making the missing ticket merely relevant — and note that it reaches "any or all" of the notices, so a partial notification failure is inside it.
What are the penalties in Maine?
Under §3360-A(6-C) the Public Utilities Commission may, in an adjudicatory proceeding, impose an administrative penalty on a person who violates the subsection. The penalty may not exceed one thousand dollars, except that if the person has been found in violation within the prior twelve months the penalty may not exceed ten thousand dollars. Administrative penalties under the subsection are in addition to any other remedies or forfeitures provided by law. There is also a provision that appears in very few damage prevention statutes: the Commission shall allow a qualified person who is assessed an administrative penalty to pay the penalty through a payment plan.
Are any excavations exempt in Maine?
A narrow set, and the one most relevant to rural routes is drawn by depth. Under §3360-A(5-K) a person is exempt from the requirements of the section for grading activities undertaken on private roads where the activities are limited to the shaping, maintaining or scraping of a road surface or road shoulder to allow for proper drainage, and the depth of the grading is no deeper than six inches measured from the road surface or shoulder before the activities begin. Both conditions must hold. The section also carries a separate regime for qualified grading activity on unpaved public ways, under which a licensing authority notifies the system and the owners of facilities in the requested road, and shallow-depth facilities — defined as underground facilities located at an insufficient depth to allow qualified grading activity — may be required to be lowered or moved.
Insure your Maine bores on the timestamps
Send the notification times, the marking times and the subcontract. In Maine the file was written before the drill turned.
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