On Thursday, July 20, the City was presented with a gold shovel to symbolize their participation as a Gold Shovel Standard Community, a program created by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) to ensure that PG&E’s hired contractors adhere to the safest excavation standards.
A Gold Shovel Standard Community awards bids to work on buried utility lines to those contractors demonstrating caution around buried infrastructure, including gas, electric, and telecommunications.
In a Gold Shovel Standard Community, everyone wins. Communities, agencies, and utilities hire highly-trained, dedicated, and safe contractors who have taken the extra steps to earn Gold Shovel classification, reducing the number of dig-ins and protecting the public from hazards resulting from damaged underground infrastructure,” says Mayor Darrell Steinberg.
The program is a critical tool for enhancing safety in local communities. Every six minutes in the United States, an underground utility line is damaged during excavation work. The Gold Shovel Standard Communities work to prevent injuries, property damage, and outages while reducing demand on first responders.