St. Johns County Urges 811 Calls Before Digging on National Awareness Day

St. Johns County is joining a nationwide public-safety campaign on August 11, known as 811 Day, to remind residents and contractors that a simple phone call before breaking ground can prevent catastrophic damage to underground utilities. The county's Utilities Department is urging anyone planning to dig — whether installing a fence, planting a tree, or undertaking major construction — to contact 811 for free utility-line locating services before the first shovel hits dirt.

The warning comes as Florida grapples with the worst record in the nation for underground utility strikes. An average of 93 buried lines are damaged every day across the state, adding up to nearly 34,000 strikes annually. Even shallow backyard projects can sever electric, gas, water, sewer, or telecommunications lines, leading to service outages, fires, explosions, and serious injuries.

What's happening

St. Johns County is promoting the 811 system, a free notification service operated by Sunshine 811 that coordinates with utilities to mark underground infrastructure before digging begins. Residents and contractors can request line locates by dialing 811 or submitting a ticket online at Sunshine811.com. Once notified, member utilities — including St. Johns County Utilities, which operates the county's water, sewer, and reclaimed water systems — have two full business days to locate and mark their lines with flags or spray paint.

The county's public-safety announcement, released August 11, 2026, coincides with National 811 Day, an annual awareness effort timed to the numbers 8/11. St. Johns County Utilities works alongside Sunshine 811 to protect the county's buried infrastructure and prevent the kinds of accidents that disrupt service and endanger lives. The department has published a six-step safe-digging protocol and educational video explaining the locating process.

The six steps are: plan the project by determining location, scope, and timeline; contact 811 and keep the ticket number; wait two business days for utility operators to respond and mark lines; confirm that each utility has responded by reviewing the ticket; verify that the flags or paint on-site match the colors and locations listed on the ticket; and dig carefully, staying at least 24 inches from marked lines and exercising caution in the tolerance zone around them. If a utility line is damaged, the county instructs residents to contact the utility company immediately and not attempt repairs themselves.

Why safe digging matters for St. Johns County homeowners

For the thousands of homeowners moving into St. Johns County's booming subdivisions each year, the 811 requirement is an unfamiliar but essential step in routine yard work. The county is among Florida's fastest-growing, with master-planned communities such as Nocatee and SilverLeaf drawing families to neighborhoods where lot lines are tight and utilities run under every lawn. Planting a tree too close to a water main or sinking a fence post into a reclaimed water line can trigger expensive repairs, liability for the homeowner, and service interruptions that ripple through the street.

Under Florida law, anyone who digs without calling 811 and subsequently damages a utility line can be held financially responsible for repairs, emergency response costs, and downstream damages such as flooded basements or gas leaks affecting neighbors. Homeowners insurance typically does not cover utility-line damage caused by failure to locate, leaving the property owner on the hook for bills that can run into thousands of dollars. In densely platted neighborhoods common in St. Johns County, where homes share easements for sewer laterals and drainage, a single misstep can affect multiple properties.

Beyond financial liability, the safety risk is real. Natural-gas lines, while less common in Florida than in northern states, do serve some St. Johns County developments, and a severed gas line can ignite or explode. Electric lines buried in yard-light circuits or pool equipment runs carry enough current to cause electrocution. Water and sewer breaks flood yards, undermine foundations, and introduce contamination risks. The two-day wait for utility locates is a minor inconvenience measured against these consequences.

The bigger picture: Florida's infrastructure vulnerability

Florida's ranking as the worst state for underground utility strikes reflects the collision of rapid growth and aging infrastructure. The state's population has swelled by millions over two decades, and utilities installed decades ago now lie beneath subdivisions, shopping centers, and road widenings that didn't exist when the lines were mapped. In St. Johns County, this dynamic is acute: the county has added tens of thousands of residents since 2020, layering new development over older septic-to-sewer conversions, rural water extensions, and original utility corridors from when much of the county was still ranch land and timber tracts.

The 34,000 annual strikes statewide translate to constant, low-grade disruption — a water main hit during a pool installation in Fruit Cove, a fiber line severed by a landscaper in Nocatee, a reclaimed water pipe punctured during fence work in Julington Creek. Each incident requires emergency crews, traffic control if the break is near a road, customer notifications, and often multi-hour service outages while repairs are made. For St. Johns County Utilities, which manages a sprawling network serving unincorporated areas from Ponte Vedra to the rural southwest, every prevented strike is staff time and ratepayer money saved.

The problem is compounded by incomplete or outdated utility maps. Older lines were hand-drawn on paper plats that have since been digitized with varying accuracy, and private utility extensions — such as those installed by developers in the 1980s and later transferred to the county — sometimes lack precise as-built records. The 811 locate process compensates for these gaps by sending technicians into the field with electronic locators, but the system depends on everyone using it. Contractors generally know to call; the weak link is the homeowner doing weekend yard work.

What 811 means for contractors and developers

For contractors and developers operating in St. Johns County, calling 811 is a legal and contractual obligation embedded in building permits, site plans, and construction contracts. Projects that disturb soil — from single-family home construction to road widenings to commercial site work — trigger 811 ticket requirements before excavation, trenching, or boring. Utility damage caused by failure to call can halt construction, void permits, and expose the contractor to penalties under Florida Statute 556, the state's underground facility damage prevention law.

In practice, large projects often require multiple 811 tickets as work progresses across a site, and utility locates must be refreshed if flags are disturbed or if digging is delayed beyond the ticket's validity period. For developers working on the master-planned communities that dominate St. Johns County's growth corridors along CR 210 and SR 16, coordinating 811 locates with grading schedules, stormwater work, and utility installations is a standard part of project management. The two-business-day response window is built into critical-path schedules.

The stakes are particularly high near critical infrastructure. St. Johns County Utilities operates water treatment plants, sewer lift stations, and reclaimed water distribution systems that serve thousands of customers; a contractor strike on a transmission main can trigger boil-water notices or force the system to bypass treated effluent, wasting a resource the county has invested heavily in reclaiming. Similarly, hitting a JEA electric feeder or a fiber trunk line serving county government and schools can cause outages affecting far more than the immediate worksite.

How the 811 system works in St. Johns County

When a resident or contractor submits an 811 ticket, Sunshine 811 — a nonprofit clearinghouse — immediately notifies all member utilities whose service areas overlap the dig location. In unincorporated St. Johns County, this typically includes St. Johns County Utilities (water, sewer, reclaimed water), JEA or Florida Power & Light (electric, depending on the area), natural gas providers if applicable, AT&T and Comcast (telecommunications), and any private utilities such as HOA-owned systems. Each utility reviews the ticket, dispatches a locator if it has facilities in the area, or clears the ticket if it does not.

Locators use electromagnetic sensors and ground-penetrating equipment to trace buried lines, then mark them with color-coded flags or spray paint: red for electric, yellow for gas, orange for telecom, blue for water, green for sewer, and purple for reclaimed water. The marks indicate the horizontal path of the line; they do not specify depth, which is why the safe-digging protocol requires staying 24 inches away and hand-digging or using vacuum excavation in the tolerance zone. If a utility does not respond within two business days, the property owner should contact 811 again before proceeding.

The service is free to the caller because utilities fund Sunshine 811 through membership fees, viewing it as far cheaper than the cost of emergency repairs, service outages, and liability. For St. Johns County Utilities, the cost of responding to 811 tickets — staff time, vehicle fuel, locating equipment — is a routine operating expense baked into the utility's budget and ultimately covered by water and sewer rates. The alternative — repairing dozens of preventable main breaks each year — would cost ratepayers far more.

What happens next

St. Johns County Utilities is directing residents to its website and Sunshine811.com for step-by-step instructions on submitting a locate request. The department has posted an educational video explaining the process and encouraging homeowners to make 811 calls a reflex before any digging project. The campaign is timed to 811 Day but runs year-round, as construction and landscaping activity in St. Johns County does not observe a seasonal pause.

For residents planning fall planting, fence repairs, or irrigation work as temperatures cool, the message is simple: call 811 or go online at least two business days before digging, wait for the marks, and respect the tolerance zones. For contractors mobilizing on the next phase of the county's relentless residential and commercial buildout, the same rules apply, backed by state law and contract terms. The county has made clear that the free service exists, the instructions are public, and the consequences of skipping the step are entirely avoidable.

As St. Johns County continues to absorb population growth that shows no sign of slowing — new schools, new road projects, new subdivisions layering over old infrastructure — the 811 system is a quiet but critical piece of keeping the lights on, the water running, and construction crews safe. Florida's unenviable national ranking in utility strikes is a daily reminder of what happens when the call is not made. The county's 811 Day push is an effort to drive that number down, one homeowner and one shovel at a time, in a region where the ground beneath every lot is more crowded with buried lines than it has ever been.