CGA's 2025 DIRT Data Shows Record-High Utility Dig-In Damages
According to Trenchless Technology, the Common Ground Alliance (CGA) has released its 2025 Damage Information Reporting Tool (DIRT) Data Summary & Trends alongside a new interactive Damage Prevention Dashboard, and the numbers point the wrong way for anyone digging near buried infrastructure.
The DIRT database is the most comprehensive record of damage to buried power, water, fiber, natural gas and other utility lines across the U.S. and Canada. The 2025 data, drawn from 221,717 unique damage reports, shows the CGA Index — a statistically modeled national measure of year-over-year damage trends — hit a record high score of 102, an 8-point increase since the index’s 2022 baseline. After modest improvement from 2022 to 2023, damages have trended upward for two straight years, rising in step with construction activity as measured by GDP.
“The 2025 DIRT Data Summary & Trends underscores a serious call to action we cannot afford to ignore,” said Sarah K. Magruder Lyle, CGA President and CEO. “As damages to buried infrastructure continue to grow alongside construction activity, inadequate damage prevention policies are failing our communities and businesses. To protect public safety and secure the critical utilities on which all Americans rely, the entire industry must commit to tangible, enforceable accountability across all stakeholders.”
Telecom/cable TV and natural gas facilities absorbed the bulk of the damage, together accounting for 87% of all 2025 facility damage reports — 51% telecom/CATV and 36% natural gas — followed by electric (8%) and water/sewer (5%). The breakdown by cause differs sharply by facility type: telecom/CATV damage is most often self-inflicted, with telecom/CATV work itself responsible for 30% of the damage to those facilities, followed by water/sewer work (22%). Natural gas facilities, by contrast, are mostly damaged by other trades — water/sewer work causes 27% of natural gas facility damage, followed by telecom/CATV work (20%) and construction/development (17%).
The root causes stayed stubbornly consistent year over year. The top 10 root causes account for 86% of all reported damages, and failure to notify before digging — meaning a crew skipped the call to 811 — remains the single largest cause of damage every year, a pattern CGA says has shown little movement.
There was one bright spot: excavators enrolled in CGA’s Damage Prevention Institute (DPI), who commit to following CGA’s best practices, submitting monthly damage data, and undergoing peer review of their prevention programs, cut their rate of attributable damages per 10,000 work hours by more than 11% from 2023 to 2025 — moving in the opposite direction of the national trend.
CGA also launched an updated Damage Prevention Dashboard that combines One Call/811 center data with 2023-2025 DIRT figures, letting users explore damage trends, locate-request volume, and state-by-state law and center requirements. “CGA’s Data Reporting and Evaluation Committee worked to get the 2025 DIRT data into stakeholders’ hands in a more usable format than ever before,” said Louis Panzer, Executive Director of North Carolina 811 and Co-Chair of CGA’s Data Reporting and Evaluation Committee. “By combining the rich data from One Call/811 centers with DIRT data, the Damage Prevention Dashboard gives stakeholders, states and individual organizations a clearer path to identifying the opportunities for actions that will result in measurable improvement.” CGA says a full State of Damage Prevention Report, contextualizing the 2025 data against broader economic trends, is due this fall.
What It Means for Subcontractors
For excavation, utility locating, and underground construction subcontractors, the data is a clear signal that damage prevention is tightening, not loosening. With the CGA Index at a record high, expect utilities, regulators and insurers to lean harder on documented locate-and-dig protocols — 811 calls, positive response confirmation, and hand-digging or potholing near marked facilities — as a condition of doing business. Crews and GCs that can point to DPI-style metrics and clean damage records will have an edge bidding on utility-adjacent work as owners scrutinize damage-prevention compliance more closely.
