Colorado's 2018 damage prevention overhaul created a commission with real enforcement power and shifted responsibility for service laterals.
Senate Bill 18-167 was the most significant change to Colorado damage prevention law in decades. Several of its provisions still catch people out.
## An enforcement body with teeth
The bill created the Underground Damage Prevention Safety Commission, seated in the Division of Oil and Public Safety at the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. Fifteen governor-appointed members review complaints against excavators, facility owners *and* locating firms.
This matters: enforcement is not aimed only at excavators. A facility owner who fails to locate, or a locating contractor who mismarks, can be brought before the same commission.
In 2024 it reviewed 59 complaints, found violations in 26, and assessed $501,500, of which $278,000 was paid. 2025 brought a record 34 hearings and $356,250 assessed.
## Everything new must be locatable
Any underground facility installed after January 1, 2019 must be electronically locatable. This closed the gap that non-conductive materials — plastic gas and water services in particular — had opened up.
If you are installing today, tracer wire or an equivalent is not optional.
## Service laterals in the right-of-way
The bill made facility owners responsible for locating service laterals within the public right-of-way. Before, the boundary between "the utility's line" and "the customer's line" left a stretch of pipe that nobody reliably marked.
Note the limit: this covers the *public right-of-way*. Private facilities on private property — the line from the meter to the house, the irrigation main, the yard light circuit — are still the property owner's responsibility, and Colorado 811 does not locate them. That's what private locating firms are for.
## The Damage Prevention Fund
Penalties feed a Damage Prevention Fund that finances education and awareness grants. It reached $336,626 in 2025, with the first grants awarding $15,000 to Colorado 811 and $5,000 to Colorado Springs Utilities.
## Home rule
Colorado's larger home rule cities may create their own safety commissions and enforce the one-call law themselves. Denver and Aurora are both inside our territory. Where a home rule city declines to do so, the state commission enforces.
If you work across municipal boundaries in the metro — and most of our members do — it is worth knowing which regime applies where.
- SB 18-167
- compliance
- UDPSC