Utility Easement

Whatever this "sketch" is, it is not an easement.

Correct, this is the sketch that accompanies the legal description.

This looks like one of the awful utility company easements around here that starts out in space with no metadata and then zig zags across the countryside. You list Oregon state plane which I guess is fine for all those users that happen to have $60,000 of GPS equipment laying around to retrace it. 🙄 I think at a minimum you need to show a basis of bearing on the actual ground.

The first line of your post says: "What do you all think of this easement?"

If you're going to start with word games because you admitted to having a garbage assignment where the work product results will likely not up to snuff, then yes, you deserve to be called out.

Maybe some of the locals will run to your rescue and tell you how to salvage this dumpster fire, but if you submit subpar work, then you should expect heavy criticism.

First, why is the project on state plane and not on the appropriate OCRS low distortion projection? Pet peeve of mine.

Second, it's a personal thing but I try to avoid the "True POB" format, as your Point of Commencement and Point of Beginning suggest that you are using. And it is easy to avoid in this situation. Begin your description with "Beginning at a point on the north Right of Way line of Finn Road which bears N20°32'44"W, 1294 feet from the SE Corner of DLC #47...... , thence ... ".

Third, we really need to see more monumentation or recoverable corners tied to. Nobody will be able to plot this without first doing quite a lot of ground work. The future surveyor will have to resolve the right of way and hope that the DLC corner still exists. I have recently dealt with a legal and exhibit for a storm easement that was very much of this form - being tied only to remote DLC Corners. It worked and was legal enough and all that, but it was a PITA to locate on the ground. I prefer to make it easy for future surveyors to follow my work.

I'd prefer that you set at least two monuments around the easement, but since that's probably not an option this late in the game, I'd suggest adding Oregon State Plane coordinates to the Point of Commencement. I'm a fan of removing all doubt concerning boundaries, so I'd probably dimension the entire easement or make it crystal clear that the POB is at the midpoint of the southerly 40' course.

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.

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.

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.

You can do your work in whatever coordinate system you prefer, it's your product. From an easement perspective, this is just a map. We really need the legal to evaluate your easement. From what i can gleam, you're not entirely confident of the road right of way as you appear to have surveyed the road CL and offset it 20'. You're missing the NW/SE offset. I would assume its 20' but we don't want assumptions.

In Idaho you would be required to set monuments and prepare and file a record of survey. This makes easements like this much more solid as it requires the preparer to actually determine the appropriate boundaries instead of leaving it up to someone else in the future.

I should have added a little more context, this project runs along 35 miles of multiple rural county roads. The County has decided that we can not place any above ground equipment in the right-of-way. This requires us to obtain a bunch of easements. My description states that the easement is to be centered on the particular piece of equipment and is bound on the southwest by the right-of-way. Thank you to everyone that gave some constructive input.

ThatOur utility clients wouldn't accept that.

No defined property line, no ties to the right of way for the tract.

I'm not sure what type of point the commencing point is but at least a second tie would be helpful.

Tax Map #? I've never used those or even referenced them, they aren't in the title chain. Maybe that's different in OR.

Is the distance also state plane? If so, I would state that bearings and distances are based on the ..........

If not, the scale factor that placed the distance near the surface should be indicated.

And I'm not a fan of the hatching, it almost looks like there are pipes crossing the site. Also, some indication of what type of easement it is: electric, gas, water.

The disclaimer is something else for a finished easement. That disclaimer is worse than not having one.

In our state an easement can be installed using a blanket or a proposed plan with the company and the land owner agreeing and filing documentation. This looks somewhat like those plans. However, they are preliminary and generally more detailed. Then the company has to file a defined CL or M&B easement within one year of construction or the easement is vacated. I assume OR doesn't have that statute.

40' wide sounds pretty tight, and what better place for utilities than the public road ROW.

Aqcuiring private easements for public utilities sounds like a disaster, but hey... government.

A quick search turned up this paper, which may not be your county, but references state law. And though I did not read it all the way through, it discusses how right-of-way widths have been adjusted by various means over the years.

https://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/ETA/Publications/FRYE_Determining-RW-Widths.pdf

I guess you would need to know when each county road was created in order to know which criteria to apply.

This seems like a really bad way for a state to do business.

"I guess you would need to know when each county road was created in order to know which criteria to apply."

That is, at least, somebody would. In this case the somebody would be the County Surveyor, which in Oregon is more than just a job title. It's an official position with statutory responsibilities. The road in question is a numbered County Road. That means that it has been subject to rather extensive establishment process including a determination of it's width. So that width, very likely, is solid.

It also means that there was a survey of the centerline, although often these roads were established in the 19th century and the monuments were wood stakes on centerline. In this wet country wood stakes last no more than a couple years. Finding one over a hundred years old is going to be tough. Finn Road appears to be a very rural gravel road that follows the terrain and not section lines, as is common in this non-flat section of the country.

"Aqcuiring private easements for public utilities sounds like a disaster, but hey… government."

Utilities will almost universally want to be on the private side of a public ROW.

If the road is widened then it's up to the utility to pay to move, if it's outside the ROW then the public bears the moving costs. That's one reason to pin down a ROW for a utility job.