By Bonnie Culverhouse

Minden City Council is considering an ordinance that will hold contracting companies responsible for digging mistakes.

There is currently a lot of boring work going on in the city limits. Mayor Nick Cox said around 80 percent of water pipe breaks by construction companies are likely responsible for breaks and boil advisories. He would like to place an Underground Utility Ordinance on February’s council agenda.

“This (ordinance) would be for anybody who bores in the city,” he said. “They would have to abide by some new rules we’ve established.”

A large number of boil advisories over the past year, were the result of companies breaching water lines. The ordinance would require a stricter permitting process.

“A few months ago, a contractor on Homer Road bored and missed his mark,” Cox said. “He hit the water line, and it shut down a lot of businesses.”

The mayor said he personally checked the location and asked the contractors for whom they worked.

“They said ‘I don’t know,’” Cox said. “So, I asked ‘who pays you?’ And they didn’t know the name of the company.”

Cox went on to say, the contractor admitted working for the company only two weeks, “And that was the head guy on the job.”

“This has to end,” said Cox, who would like to hire a code enforcement official. “Their job would be to ride around and make sure that everybody doing underground utility work for the city has gone through a permitting process. If not, we want the ability through this ordinance to shut them down.”

Dirty water in the Minden City limits comes from a utility worker hitting a line, he stressed which prompts the increase in boil advisories.

“Now, when it gets cold, we may have water breaks,” he said. “But outside of that, if we can keep contractors from hitting our infrastructure, we would have 80 percent less emergencies.”

The ordinance process will require the boring company to produce paperwork, including a permit.

“They are going to have to pay for that permit,” Cox said. “And they’re going to have to have tags.

“There will also be something in the ordinance called ‘potholing’ or ‘daylighting,’” he continued. “It’s where you open the hole and see it before you can start digging. We want the business to open the ground and look at our water line and see that you aren’t going to hit it.”

(Editor’s note: As of 1:30 p.m. Thursday, the boil advisory for the 200-247 blocks of Pecanview Drive has been lifted.)