It has long been a controversy here in Texas as to if we are required to monument easements.?ÿ Today I received this email from TSPS concerning TBPLS & monumenting easements:
"During the March 9, 2018 meeting of the Texas Board of Professional Land Surveying, Mike McMinn, Board Investigator, reported that he receives questions from surveyors re: the?ÿmonumentation of easements, primarily concerning the surveyor??s responsibility for monumentation of easement corners when originally establishing the location of an easement or retracing the boundaries of an easement. Mr. McMinn expressed his opinion that every corner of an easement traversing a property should be monumented and indicated there is a big problem in that such easements are not being adequately monumented when created. Mr. McMinn has drafted a document which, if adopted or approved by the Board, would establish a new Board policy or guidelines. A motion was made to allow the use of the document but that motion was rescinded to allow Mr. McMinn time to develop a list of exceptions. The issue is on the TBPLS meeting agenda for this Friday, May 25, 2018."
The board's meeting tomorrow can be viewed online at:?ÿ http://adminmonitor.com/tx/txls/board_meeting/20180509/
i know mike, and consider him to be a very knowledgeable and conscientious guy.?ÿ but i don't agree with the gist of his point here, and would simply offer this easement i wrote about 12 years ago as counterpoint:
here's google map of the tract:
I am a PLS and I work for a large utility company in Idaho. Easements are the main focus of my job and I would agree than certain situations warrant monumentation and filing of a ROS, but definitely not all easements. In Idaho, anyone can create legal descriptions, not just land surveyors. If surveyors are required to monument and file a ROS on all easements then the costs of creating these easements goes through the roof and large companies like the one I work for will stop having surveyors create those easements and revert back to having other employees (who aren??t licensed surveyors) prepare the easements. A major step backwards and I??m sure you??d agree if you had to retrace or define the boundaries of some of those older easements.
Another thing to consider is do surveyors really need to set more monuments in the ground? When the average Joe finds a rebar, they automatically assume the rebar is a ??property corner? and they proceed to build fences, install sprinklers and land scaping, maybe even build a shop only to find out the rebar wasn??t a ??property corner? but instead it is a point of curvature, or a point of tangency, or a reference monument, or a witness corner, or an angle point, or a GPS base station control point, or even an easement corner. My point is I think we sometimes over complicate and confuse the people we are intending to help.
Travis Hanks, PLS
Easements are treated poorly, sometimes the location of an easement is More important that the property line... but to pepper the world with bits of crap at very point of sinuosity is just plain silly.
Describe (assuring it is survey-able) and record. done.
As for any proper and legal description, be it for the boundary of the property or for an easement across the property, enough information should be mentioned about existing monuments in place to properly be able to locate the beginning point and any other corner of the easement or property being described.
That would include being able to find, replace or retrace existing monuments and boundaries and to have sufficient monument locations to be able to confirm the referenced bearing control used for the description and that it can be used to locate and retrace the entire easement with certainty.
When the land owner wants all corners to be set, they should be set. They are the ones that must live with the limits of the encumberances that affect their property.
I've followed old and new easements that describe some point of beginning on some boundary that is actually some point no where near the actual boundary.
Then along the same system, some of the descriptions will be very accurate and are easy to place on the property.
A property I am surveying has a pipeline across from side to side and the easement description casually mentions that there is an easement and does not go into any detail to retrace its location.
There is not enough evidence to be assured the owners of the land were paid property per rod for the easement.
I am going to have to do an asbuilt location from the carbonite signs and spot locate where I can get a reading of the four pipelines that cross the property.
IMVHO, that causes a burden for my client to have me create a description of an existing easement across his property to produce a?ÿ proper Title survey. The burden of locating and describing the extent of the pipeline easements encumberance should be the responsibility of the pipeline owners.
0.02
Travis,
The Board got a lot of questions and clarified things to a degree. The requirement is not in play for all easements. The problem is the guys who survey property to prepare an easement and write something complex with no way to find it on the ground. To make it worse they avoid rehabilitating the controlling corners or setting anything. For a finale they file no corner records or survey. Its crap and it needs to stop.
I posed questions to the Board and gave some of the same examples you did. They listened and responded accordingly.
Another thing to consider is do surveyors really need to set more monuments in the ground? When the average Joe finds a rebar, they automatically assume the rebar is a ??property corner? and they proceed to build fences, install sprinklers and land scaping, maybe even build a shop only to find out the rebar wasn??t a ??property corner? but instead it is a point of curvature, or a point of tangency, or a reference monument, or a witness corner, or an angle point, or a GPS base station control point, or even an easement corner. My point is I think we sometimes over complicate and confuse the people we are intending to help.
Travis Hanks, PLS
I agree with your main argument, but what is quoted above is an argument for caps that are large enough to explain the monument, not for fewer monuments.?ÿ
Maybe the problem is in the poorly written description.?ÿ A well written description with ties to well established survey monuments can always be located on the ground every time with or without monumentation.
The stream of the meeting is online but I am unable to view it for some reason.?ÿ http://adminmonitor.com/tx/txls/board_meeting/20180509/#
Would that include as a monument?ÿthe facility, for instance an overhead power line. You write an easement along a power line and use it as the centerline, is that enough monumentation for?ÿan easement in Texas? Along an existing road?ÿor an underground line? Do monuments around a subdivision with offsets to the easement limit?ÿcount, or do the limits of the easement need monuments?
Just curious.
Would that include as a monument?ÿthe facility, for instance an overhead power line. You write an easement along a power line and use it as the centerline, is that enough monumentation for?ÿan easement in Texas? Along an existing road?ÿor an underground line? Do monuments around a subdivision with offsets to the easement limit?ÿcount, or do the limits of the easement need monuments?
Just curious.
that does beg a good question.?ÿ in the case of the of monster i posted above- it was specifically aligned along the course of installed underground lines and facilities as we shot them, and as dictated by the client (in this case, the city who was not only the dominant estate but also the underlying fee owner, and also the governmental entity that had to sign off on the veracity of the document).
but it is less, though still fairly common- at least in the major urban areas of texas- for various private and municipal entities to acquire utility easements using language along the lines of "five feet either side of the centerline of facilities as installed," which one can imagine would create all kinds of problems if there were not a field crew on hand to immediately shoot installed improvements.?ÿ or in the case of directional bores...
Would that include as a monument?ÿthe facility, for instance an overhead power line. You write an easement along a power line and use it as the centerline, is that enough monumentation for?ÿan easement in Texas? Along an existing road?ÿor an underground line? Do monuments around a subdivision with offsets to the easement limit?ÿcount, or do the limits of the easement need monuments?
Just curious.
that does beg a good question.?ÿ in the case of the of monster i posted above- it was specifically aligned along the course of installed underground lines and facilities as we shot them, and as dictated by the client (in this case, the city who was not only the dominant estate but also the underlying fee owner, and also the governmental entity that had to sign off on the veracity of the document).
but it is less, though still fairly common- at least in the major urban areas of texas- for various private and municipal entities to acquire utility easements using language along the lines of "five feet either side of the centerline of facilities as installed," which one can imagine would create all kinds of problems if there were not a field crew on hand to immediately shoot installed improvements.?ÿ or in the case of directional bores...
I've done lots of easements for installed gas, electric, water lines. Always called out the pipe line as the center, even though we all know the locators dont quite hit right on it.
Bright line rules cause more problems than they solve.
one time I set over 50 rebar/caps in an office park subdivision because the city required every corner and angle point be set. There was already hundreds out there, a good fraction of which no longer marked anything because that's the nature of office parks, every project adjusts the boundaries. Stupid waste of time, in my opinion. I'm all for monuments but in some situations some permanent control set strategically throughout the area is more useful than rebars hit by towner disks and moved by landscapers.
Our records are full of easements less than 10yrs old that basically state that easement passes thru a tract of land that has been stated owner and recording information and is shown in an attachment that is a simple no scale sketch with no demensions showing how far the beginning point or ending point is from any monument with no bearings and no demensions of the easement.
There exists very detailed surveys of these easements and properties from on the ground surveys in the company's records and they never find their way into public records or the hands of land owner that easement cross their land.
I will never understand why this is allowed.
One of the first lessons learned on the job was that "it costs the same to do a survey wrong as it does to do a survey the right way".
The good old blanket easement becomes a joke over time. ?ÿThose should never have been legal for pipelines and other fairly simple situations.
The good old blanket easement becomes a joke over time. ?ÿThose should never have been legal for pipelines and other fairly simple situations.
My wife thinks she has a blanket easement too on cold nights.
I always considered the blanket deal more of and adverse possession issue.
Blanket easements started out being the easiest method when they knew they were crossing that property and not having a definate route on paper or on the ground and being able to build in the future.
With today's requirements for surveyors accuracy and complete product expectations, easements need to be defined as well as the property description and be able to with absolute certainty, know the extents and how to place them on the ground from public records.
I like 3.406 acre example no matter its OMG appearance. It has demensions to compute all points?ÿ on the boundaries and there surely is a legend page of calls for the extents of the easements and it can be placed on the ground is it came from actual ground locations.
"..but i don't agree with the gist of his point here, and would simply offer this easement i wrote about 12 years ago as counterpoint .."
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Looking at a monster like that I'd wonder, why can't the structure that the easement serves, also serve as the monument for the easements?
There's likely a number of scenarios where that could go horribly wrong, but in the vein of 'monuments of sufficient stability', a building corner, with another reference for a baseline, would have to be the strongest evidence of purpose.
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@kkw_archer what happened at the board meeting?
Is there a new regulation on the horizon?
