Here is a problem in the back of the Study Guide for Texas Surveyors. My question is, what happens to lot 4? I've talked with some other registered surveyors and we can't agree on an answer. Does lot 4 come back into existence (reemerge) or is it gone forever and what used to be lot 4 is now lot 3?
Where do the lot lines go now? Prorate the river frontage? Bearing intersecting the gradient boundary? Draw lines from the old gradient boundary to the new gradient boundary?
Thanks in advance!
Re-emergence
This looks like one of those many instances when you need to find state case law. The BLM Casebook, Chapter D, has a little section entitled “Re-emerged Lands.” There, the disagreement is laid out: Federal common law says put things back the way they were; other decisions have held in favor of the remote lots’ continued riparian rights.
Cheers,
Henry
> My question is, what happens to lot 4? I've talked with some other registered surveyors and we can't agree on an answer. Does lot 4 come back into existence (reemerge) or is it gone forever and what used to be lot 4 is now lot 3?
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> Where do the lot lines go now? Prorate the river frontage? Bearing intersecting the gradient boundary? Draw lines from the old gradient boundary to the new gradient boundary?
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>
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Well, the relevant questions are the following, aren't they?
1) Did Lot 3 become riparian upon the river reaching it by erosion between 1930 and 1950?
2) If Lot 3 had become riparian by 1950, how should subsequent accretions be apportioned?
3) If Lot 3 was not originally or subsequently riparian, then does it expand to follow the river as accretions occur?
What are the answers to those questions?
Along the lines of Kent's comments, I'd need to know how the river changed course between 1930 and 1950. Was it erosion/accretion or evulsion.
Assuming erosion/accretion, my first gut reaction would be that four is gone (existing as alluvium somewhere down stream or perhaps in the Gulf of Mexico). Lots 1 2 and 3 now have river frontage in proportion to the aggregate frontage from 1950 and divided by the frontage today (Lot 2 would have a panhandle from its Southeast corner area, running Southeasterly to the river). Notice that the East and West lines of the total block today aren't projections of the old boundaries, they appear to flare a bit from the 1950 river location. I suspect these outer lines were based on proration with the neighboring tracts.
The land owner of lot 4, has lost his land lot 4 is gone, and the owner of lot 3 now has river front property. The river moving was over a span of 20 years. If it was during a flash flood or hurricane, then the owner of Lot 4 could reclaim his land.
This is why it is important to fight for every inch of land. Built a bulkhead bring in dirt, if Lot 4 just had and inch left and the river moves back down, then Lot 4 would still be here today.
> Notice that the East and West lines of the total block today aren't projections of the old boundaries, they appear to flare a bit from the 1950 river location. I suspect these outer lines were based on proration with the neighboring tracts.
I think you might be reading too much information from a hand drawn sketch accompanying a question in a book.
Actually, the premises of the problem as posed didn't rule out an avulsive change of the river channel between 1930 and 1950. It did state that all changes subsequent to 1950 were by erosion or accretion, but that was only after 1950. It's true that the diagram didn't indicate that there was anything left of Lot 4 on the other side of the river as it existed in 1950.
On the first question, i.e. whether Lot 2 that in 1930 was not riparian had become so in 1950, the answer would appear to be "yes" inasmuch as Lot 2 plainly had frontage upon a river in 1950. So, under the common law rule, Lot 2 would still have a frontage on the river in the "today" scenario and Lot 4 would have been extinquished by 1950.
In my opinion, the rule of apportionment of river front in the case of accretion is an ugly one because it would produce curving sidelines between 1950 and the present situation that are nearly indeterminate in the sense that twenty surveyors would give twenty different answers. As a practical matter, some more readily determinable scheme that wasn't obviously inequitable would probably be one that I'd prefer to explain in court.
The case of an accretion bank that forms continuously over decades is to my mind much different than the rather clean exercise of apportioning some relict horseshoe bend of a river that suddenly is there after a flood cuts a new channel. That is, in theory, you could track the formation of the accretion bank at intervals and at each interval there would be a set of boundary corners at the bank as of that moment, all representing some momentary apportionment of river front. Fast forward decades and those series of boundary corners describe curves that two surveyors might not agree upon as to exact form or location.
A more practical solution for most cases pretty much has to be based in some way upon projection of the upland sidelines of the lots.
basically this, no? (was my first inclination anyways)
They already answered the question for you in the question when they stipulated the manner in which the river moved.
:good:
Except they already said how the river moved in the question.
The question doesn't set up how the river changed from 1930 to 1950, as far as I can tell anyway.
The scheme that seems most practical to me would be prolonging the side line of Lot 2 (assuming that it is nominally parallel with the other side lines as appears in the drawing) and extending a line from the 1950 corner of Lots 1 and 2 on the river parallel with the common line of Lots 2 and 3. The parallel lines will tend to divide any future river front of 1 and 2 in very nearly the same proportions as existed in 1950, when (under the premises of the problem as posed) the accretion presumably began. So the result is not inequitable and the common line of 1 and 2 is also definite.
