I read the new Boundary Dispute Practice for Kentucky Lawyers and Surveyors book from Bud Salyer that has just been released.?ÿ There are a lot of profound thoughts in there that I read a dozen times to try and commit them to memory.?ÿ I will have to read it again with a highlighter and sticky arrows because my memory isn't what it used to be.?ÿ While it cites a lot of Kentucky law, I can see this book being a benefit to surveyors around the world.?ÿ?ÿ
I may misremember or have misinterpreted but one of the gems I got was that of course when a deed call is with the creek, then the line goes with wherever the creek actually lays, unless.... the description calls for monuments at each course more or less along the line of the creek then it goes from monument to monument.?ÿ That was new to me. Highly recommended.
Speaking of new books, according to Amazon, Jan Van Sickle's GPS for Land Surveyors is going to a 5th edition at the end of next month. He is giving it a new title, GPS and GNSS for Land Surveyors. IMHO, a must have for every surveyor's library, and one that is worth keeping up with the latest edition.
Also according to Amazon, Boundary Control & Legal Principles will be coming out with an 8th Edition at Christmas-time. HO HO HO!
Thank you for the recommendations. I'm looking forward to adding to my collection!
Basic stuff on water boundaries, those water courses will often change over time with accretion and avulsion. Some times there is a loss of land and other times land is added.
I was up to speed on the line changing as the waterway changes but I hadn't heard that little caveat that if the description calls for the waterway and you try and do the very best job you can and drill pins into the creekbed and call for the pins in your description, then the line becomes fixed to your pins regardless of what happens with the moving creekbed.
I was up to speed on the line changing as the waterway changes but I hadn't heard that little caveat that if the description calls for the waterway and you try and do the very best job you can and drill pins into the creekbed and call for the pins in your description, then the line becomes fixed to your pins regardless of what happens with the moving creekbed.
Wouldn't it depend on the deed wording? IF it calls the line riparian, you still need measurements for computing acreage at that time, but when the riparian creek moves by erosion your pins become irrelevant. No?
@bill93 the deed call to a watercourse, whether it be top of bank, thread of stream or center of a water way are consoling factors over everything. Setting a pin is nothing more than a witness as to where it was on a given date and does not lock in the bounds for those who come in the future.
A call to a water course is a call to a natural monument and no artificial monument, such as a pin will lock in the location if there accretion or avulsion. When the watercourse changes location, so does the title line. The original intent of the deed call cannot be altered or fixed for the future by the setting of pins. The pins become completely irrelevant if the shoreline or thread moves, except as bearing markers.
As for calculating area along the waterway, especially if meandering, that area is what it is as of the date of the survey but is in no way a controlling facture is the erosion or silting wither increases or decreases as a result of forces of nature. I am, however, assuming that the original deed calls are to the waterway and not a fixed artificial monument.
@tom-bushelman that is not true, a call to a natural monument such as a waterway will control every time as the natural monument clearly demonstrates the original intent of the initial conveyance. There is a book called Boundaries and Adjacent Waterways that discusses these issues in details.
I practice in a state in NJ, along the east coast where water boundaries often move do to hurricanes and other natural events. It is not uncommon to see water boundaries move over time. In certain coastal areas boundary lines were significantly altered as a result of Hurrican Sandy that made landfall in NJ 11 years ago. The State always owns to the high-water line of the coast and any tidal body of streams or navigable waterways. The call to a lake or stream that are not tidally influenced are different but if the shore lines of them move, so does the title line.
That's what I always thought. Case law in Kentucky apparently says differently however. There were a couple of case law examples that are the "law of the land" thought differed from what I had always believed. This is an interesting book with the cases cited to back up the text.
In another case(in this book), 5 surveyors all said the same thing in court about following a ridge call and the judge ruled differently than the surveyors, held up in appeal.
Tom and Chris seem to be discussing two differnt things. Tom is taking about a boundary that "more or less" follows a creek, and Chris is talking about a boundary that calls for the creek as a controlling element.
Chris, I think you used the word "avulsion" instead of "errosion".
