Sec. 16-356. Civil penalty. Application for hearing.

Any person, public agency or public utility which the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority determines, after notice and opportunity for a hearing as provided in section 16-41, to have failed to comply with any provision of this chapter or any regulation adopted under section 16-357 shall forfeit and pay to the state a civil penalty of not more than forty thousand dollars, provided any violation involving the failure of a public utility to mark any approximate location of an underground utility facility correctly or within the time frames prescribed by regulation, which violation did not result in any property damage or personal injury and was not the result of an act of gross negligence on the part of the public utility, shall not result in a civil penalty of more than one thousand dollars. Notwithstanding the provisions contained in subsection (d) of section 16-41, the person, public agency or public utility receiving a notice of violation pursuant to subsection (c) of section 16-41 shall have thirty days from the date of receipt of the notice in which to deliver to the authority a written application for a hearing.

(P.A. 81-146, S. 3; P.A. 87-71, S. 8; P.A. 90-221, S. 9, 15; P.A. 04-43, S. 1; P.A. 11-80, S. 1; P.A. 14-94, S. 47.)

History: P.A. 87-71 added references to Sec. 16-41 and provided for a thirty-day period to request a hearing after receiving notice of violation; P.A. 90-221 made technical change in section; P.A. 04-43 changed maximum penalty from $10,000 to $40,000 and specified a maximum penalty of $1,000 for failure to mark the approximate location in cases where no property damage, personal injury or gross negligence occurred; pursuant to P.A. 11-80, “Department of Public Utility Control” was changed editorially by the Revisors to “Public Utilities Regulatory Authority”, effective July 1, 2011; P.A. 14-94 replaced “underground facilities” with “underground utility facility” and made technical changes, effective October 1, 2015.