Activity Feed › Discussion Forums › Strictly Surveying › Utility Easement
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In the last century, I worked for an engineering firm that did all of US West’s (now CenturyLink) engineering in Oregon and Washington. As a LSIT and then a green PLS, I was the lucky one that got to prepare the lion’s share of the easements (it did keep me out the land development world for which I am eternally grateful). The crews would do a thorough monument search as part of the process. The right-of-way would and adjacent property would be resolved based on what was found. Easements with exhibits would be created where I tried to show ties to two found monuments if possible. Monuments were never set at easement corners, the cost of preparing and recording hundreds of individual surveys a year would have been over the top.
Placing the structures within the right-of-way is often frowned upon by utilities. If the right-of-way is expanded in the future, the utilities are on the hook for moving their infrastructure if it falls within it. If it is outside of the current right-of-way then it is moved on the road authority’s dime. The first record of survey I stamped was for Pacific Power. They were moving several miles of service line out of a right-of-way into an easement to keep it outside of a future right-of-way expansion. In this case we filed a survey without setting any property monumentation. The survey was then referenced on each individual easement. This might be appropriate for the OP’s project as well.
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Why mention the DLC at all? Surely the property has been subdivided beyond just a DLC since then, which would mean there are much closer corners to begin at (either the SE or NE corner of the subject property for example). I still see many examples of new easements and legal descriptions being created that have a random fly tie to a DLC corner thousands of feet away that contributes nothing of value to the description.
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Eminent Domain, condemnation, rural land, pennies on the dollar, simple, effective, and consistent.
These are operations by which the public can acquire property, true. But they are by no means simple, nor cheap, nor quick, and the property owner must still be paid fair market value – and the judges will lean toward the property owner’s idea of “fair”.
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Not all situations fall under eminent domain, fairly sure an easement for a utility vault or whatever this is will not be one of those situations. Plus, the utility doesn’t want to be in the ROW. We have been doing many surveys to get utilities out of ROWs. They are arguably our best clients.
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No, not all situations fall under E.D., but a scenario like this is a fair example of what it was meant for.
35 miles of mish-mashed hot garbarge (on a regular basis). Okay, fine.
I guess that’s what everyone in that jurisdiction is used to.
I’m not going to argue semantics, but I laugh at your reliance on the ideology of “fair market value”. If the government chooses to enact it’s E.D. authority, it’s coming. Take what they offer, or get (next to) nothing. This sounds like cheap land in the first place.
Like murphy said: “Easements are little troublemakers mostly because their monumentation and/or description is an afterthought and not properly included in the scope and budget. If you catch yourself saying or thinking any version of, “It’s just an easement”, you’ve got a 1900s attitude in a 2000s world.”
Besides, I’m not sure why anyone here wants to argue about who pays? Who cares? Someone always has to pay. Should it be the folks making money hand over fist? Maybe.
Surveyors should be involved no matter what. Much of what this initial thread was about demonstrates how as time moves forward, less and less proper work is conducted, and at some point it will all be based on GIS, just like the “disclaimer” tries to assert.
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This reply was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by
mulambda382. Reason: Typo
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This reply was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by
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The county condemns the property for a ROW, putting the private property of the utility company into the ROW, the utility company then forces the county to pay to move it outside again and gets a second easement from the landowner, with the county and taxpayers paying to move whatever it is that the utility company installed. That’s the plan?
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I dont know how eminent domain works in Oregon, but i have worked on several projects in ID involving eminent domain. Each one took 2-3 years for just a single parcel and incurred well over 100k in expenses for 1 parcel. 35 miles of eminent domain would take a lifetime here.
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Every utility or railroad I’ve worked has avoided eminent domain like the plague. It is expensive and time consuming along with being a PR nightmare. One thing I have learned working on projects where it was a possibility, take the second offer. According to the attorneys, it is usually above a fair value and is as good as it is going to get. It will only go down from there once they start billing hours.
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@MightyMoe your suggestion is exactly why I made the hammer/nail comment.
There is untold amounts of existing private property already inside of the countless ROWs across America.
What makes you think that because a ROW was expanded, that anyone has to move anything?
It’s likely not the whack-a-mole, or private property reason that has been suggested.
The OP already stated that under the current conditons, only the above ground appurtenances are to be outside the ROW. That implies the underground portions are already inside the ROW. So, the county already has both situations going on. Which is why I asked about the wires/connections.
If you want it both ways… thats the problem, and that’s what i’m getting at.
Why do you think the county wants it both ways?
Because when a car (or any offender) smashes into that above ground structure inside the ROW for any number of reasons, it’s likely the local governemnt would have to pay to repair/replace.
Is this the best way to deal with above ground (buried) damage? Maybe, maybe not.
Are there other ways to mitigate these scenarios? Sure, but that would mean government would have to evaluate themselves fairly.
And if the government is already getting things both ways, why stop now?
The entire point of this diatribe is, if public utilities are a benefit for all and deemed necessary or required, then the mechanism and logistics for delivery of public services should be promoted with speed, efficiency and zeal, and the servants elected to represent the constituents should make that happen.
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“What makes you think that because a ROW was expanded, that anyone has to move anything?”
Utilities do not just get to use rights of way for free. When a public utility has its facilities inside a public right of way it has to pay a proportion of its revenue to the governing public agency.
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This is truly bizarre to me. I’m trying to envision a case where eminent domain for row is appropriate and PUC utilities should be outside the new right of way. With new residential construction it makes sense, but that’s not normally an eminent domain situation.
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My first personal encounter with this issue goes back to my early years of serving on a Rural Water District Board of Directors. We had a case where the landowner had refused to give us an easement for placing a main water line for half a mile. The line was installed in the county road r-o-w. Then the County had to rework a small bridge. Our line had to be moved (at our expense) for them to do what they had to do. Fortunately, there was a new landowner who was willing to give us an easement for an area around the bridge.
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So, in the area where the OP is working, what happens in the case of a fire hydrant sticking up above ground?
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This reply was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by
mulambda382.
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This reply was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by
mulambda382.
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This reply was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by
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Water lines (also sanitary & storm) are typically owned by the public agency and not by a franchise utility. So the useage fees are a nullity.
And, in some cases it makes sense for the franchise utilities to use the right of way and pay the fees. So it goes. They make a business decision. Nevertheless, the main point in this sub-thread is that it takes much – much – much more than the “stroke of a pen” to acquire additional right of way.
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So, let me see if I have the story straight. In general, in Oregon: water, sanitary, and storm are “public”; electric and gas are “private”; you have franchise agreements dictating public policy for regulated and unregulated public utilities; and you’re still worried about money.
All this while bending over backwards to defend the status quo, because it’s the only thing folks are familiar with and think it’s the best thing since sliced bread, despite the inherent problems/hypocrisy built into the system, which doesn’t seem to matter.
I’m not arguing about the way things are. I’m arguing about a legal way to deal with that steaming pile of yuck that most can’t seem to wrap their head around. ED exists. It can be used. It has been used. We’re all adults, and I’m not sorry people don’t like it.
You’re still missing the big picture: Why the disparate difference between the implimentation of “public services from public utilities”? Sounds like the people of Oregon are getting bent over the barrel.
Oh, and one other thing… found monuments don’t always control!
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The monument is the utility cabinet per the OP. All the rest of the information leads to the cabinet. The cabinet is the center of the easement along the road ROW and the ROW is the bound. Pretty simple. I thought all these adds for ED was for some other issue??
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“I wish we could use OCRS, the non-surveyors that run the company don’t want to use multiple Zones across our territory, so they just run everything in Oregon North to play nice with GIS.”
That statement alone tells me yours is not a company that should be supplying legally descriptive land information. I also can’t imagine a GIS department that would take multi-zone state information as an extension of one zone, or if they do, what kind of crap they produce as well. I hope all their GIS specialists are aware of this.
Regarding your sketch, even for a sketch that’s accompanied by hopefully a much more descriptive deed, the first few things that stood out are: No real boundary info anywhere. Even the “right of way” is described as the “as traveled way”. These aren’t exchangeable terms. A distance of 1294′ explicitly implies that it’s +/- 0.5′. Is that acceptable? No distance or course shown from POB… or along any of the easement bounds for that matter. A N49dE 10.00′ is pointing to the SC (?) Not sure what that means. There are several more issues. I think a map that leaves even one item up to obvious interpretation ior has dependant ties that are not secure s not finished, and this has many.
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My first personal encounter with this issue goes back to my early years of serving on a Rural Water District Board of Directors. We had a case where the landowner had refused to give us an easement
In WA, a water district can take via eminent domain. Makes it easy to create parcels when they want to buy a chunk of land from an owner.
-All thoughts my own, except my typos and when I am wrong. -
I submit tons of easements to local and county agencies, the descriptions and exhibits are always reviewed and the drawings are required to be in State Plane so that they fall into the local and county GIS cartoons.
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