Here's the situation. You are involved in preparing easement descriptions for miles and miles of new installation. Do you survey the easements as precisely as you would for boundary surveys for transfer of fee ownership?
Here's why I ask. I have been made aware of "sketches" or "exhibits" being appended to recorded easement documents for a new installation across several States. These "sketches" suggest that sloppy procedure was used to develop the easement descriptions. For example, imagine a center line entering the northwest quarter of a section along the north section line and exiting somewhere along the west section line still in the northwest quarter. The sketch indicates that a monument was found at the north quarter corner and the west quarter corner, but nothing is mentioned at the northwest corner of the section. The description for the easement begins a specific distance westerly from the monument at the north quarter corner, then runs on a specific bearing further to the northwest along the north section line, then runs at a specific bearing and distance to the west section line, then runs at a specific bearing and distance southerly along the west section line to a point at a specific distance northerly from the west quarter corner, then runs at a specific bearing and distance (northeasterly) to the point of beginning. How in the world do you know the bearings of the north and west section lines without a monument at the northwest corner? Or, is this some common short cut used that works as long as you use identical bearings for descriptions on either side of specific section lines. Are such easement descriptions not treated as equal to other types of boundary surveying?
I have seen the easements you describe and here is my take.
The easements and exhibit drawing attached to them (which at worst are hand drawn on graph paper), are obviously created by the utility company field crew, and then submitted to the legal team for filing. In this case, they are meeting their respective requirements. The field crew in drawing up a site sketch, and the attorneys in taking that sketch and creating a legal document.
The issue is that neither of these professions has much concern about position. All of us have encountered attorneys that have little to no experience in land law, and frankly, there is little money in it for a lawyer, when divorces and accident law is far Far FAR more lucrative.
As surveyors, we should not compare our product with those made by the utility firms. As surveyors, we should hold ourselves to a higher standard, rather than scrape by on not being the worst easement in the pile.
Of course, their are times when the easement needs to be deliberately vague, but specific language can be used I those cases, and this is certainly not the case in utility lines.
> Here's the situation. You are involved in preparing easement descriptions for miles and miles of new installation. Do you survey the easements as precisely as you would for boundary surveys for transfer of fee ownership?
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> Here's why I ask. I have been made aware of "sketches" or "exhibits" being appended to recorded easement documents for a new installation across several States. These "sketches" suggest that sloppy procedure was used to develop the easement descriptions. For example, imagine a center line entering the northwest quarter of a section along the north section line and exiting somewhere along the west section line still in the northwest quarter. The sketch indicates that a monument was found at the north quarter corner and the west quarter corner, but nothing is mentioned at the northwest corner of the section. The description for the easement begins a specific distance westerly from the monument at the north quarter corner, then runs on a specific bearing further to the northwest along the north section line, then runs at a specific bearing and distance to the west section line, then runs at a specific bearing and distance southerly along the west section line to a point at a specific distance northerly from the west quarter corner, then runs at a specific bearing and distance (northeasterly) to the point of beginning. How in the world do you know the bearings of the north and west section lines without a monument at the northwest corner? Or, is this some common short cut used that works as long as you use identical bearings for descriptions on either side of specific section lines. Are such easement descriptions not treated as equal to other types of boundary surveying?
When I was in business in Wyoming, my main service provided was route surveys, i.e. pipe lines and buried telephone cables. In 1975 I did 600 miles of these routes throughout the State of Wyoming. We located all the corners around any section that we crossed through and went out to the necessary adjacent monuments in order to position any missing corners that would control any subdivisional lines within the sections in order to break the section down for patented lines. All route survey lines, which may be the center line of the easement, but maybe turn out to not be the actual trench location after construction, where crossing supposed ownership lines and section line crossing intersections were calculated and stations and land corner ties were provided on the maps.
My thoughts are: That these easements are in the same classification as any boundary and property survey and should be treated as such.
I have a publication in my library entitled "Guide to Right of Way Survey Practices" prepared by, I hate to say it, but, the ASCE Task Committee on Right of Way Survey Practices of the Committee on Land Surveying of the Surveying and Mapping Division and Cosponsered by the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping with a copyright date of 1981. It has only 13 pages, but is a very good reference pertaining to Right of Way Surveying and anyone performing route surveys should have a copy in their library.
I forgot to mention above that the "sketch" is signed and stamped by a licensed land surveyor which is what makes it appear to be a legitimate survey plat.
For Louisiana below are our standards for route surveys. It is sort of a quasi boundary survey. You look for monuments on each side of where the easement crosses the property lines and if none found then fences, ditches or other evidence of occupation can be used assuming it follows the description.
In speaking with the pipeline/utility attorneys it is their opinion "the intent is to go from property line to property line and if there is a small gap using bearings and distances the intent controls."
Many easements now state the center of what is installed will become the center of the easement which cleans up any construction mistakes
B. Scope and Product. A route survey shall, as a minimum, consist of the following elements.
1. The professional land surveyor shall utilize sufficient title information and research as needed to define the tract boundaries.
2. The professional land surveyor shall locate sufficient evidence, on the ground, to
determine the location of all boundary lines that will be crossed by the proposed right-of-way, servitude or easement. Installation of new monuments is not required when defining the limits of the right-of-way, servitude or easement to be acquired.
For plats:
Sufficient information to re-establish the right-of-way, servitude or easement, including any found monuments, must be shown at a suitable scale or in a separate detail on each plat or map.
The State of Texas has no distinction between Easements and Boundary surveys (except for the stupid loophole in "construction estimates") so all easements we provide on utilities, and made with the same care and reconstruction that the boundary is, with the possible exception that we monument centerline vs. perimeter but place enough reference rods, out of the way of construction, that it's stupid easy to recreate, without having to go back to the boundary that may or may not have been monumented when we showed up.
> Are such easement descriptions not treated as equal to other types of boundary surveying?
To answer your question, yes, WE DO. Sadly others do not. I've seen it time and time again. Whether our contracts are per parcel or just hourly there is ample time and resources to prepare RW documents and exhibits correctly.
We try to prepare each parcel's easement description as if it were tailored made. If one estate's description call the section line out as having a bearing of "north", the easement that is prepared is fit to the parcel. The property next door may be described with a recent survey and the section line recorded as having a bearing other than "north". That parcel's easement will "fit" that also.
Does this require a boundary survey of each and every parcel? Sometimes. Although that is not our goal and Oklahoma Minimum Standards don't consider RW and easement work to be actual surveying; we go about it as if they were. I guess the only difference would be we don't actually monument missing boundary corners of the servient parcels. We do however monument our RW.
And yes there are times that we run into some really mucked-up crap. If there is no way to resolve a boundary's apparent location, we prepare the documents to reflect the problem and try to not to cloud the issue with ambiguous cartoons and conflicting exhibits.
^^^ This is what we do. The client (municipality or utility company) doesn't want us to do boundary surveys of each parcel we cross. They feel its cost prohibitive. I disagree, but do as they wish, just cya.
Instead we locate as much monumentation as we can find along the route and use these locations, provided they check to the record reasonably well, for the property lines. We then prepare the easement plat with at least these two notes that clearly state the property lines do not represent a boundary survey of any parcel and the plat is for a description of an easement only, and that the constructed utility is the centerline of the easement.
As long as we have been doing these, we have never had an issue, as long as you clearly state the intent of the plat.
I had a survey board member tell us in a state law/regulations review class, that basically you as the surveyor, can do whatever you want, or the client wants, you can do as little or as much work as you see fit, as long as you clearly state on the plat what you did. The key word there being clearly.