Many (most?) of the utilities around here try to run inside the row to avoid this very problem.
Where are the wires/lines and how do they connect to this island easement?
Nothing on the sketch would lead me to believe that any given easement is contiguous/adjacent to another one?
Buying up 35 miles of piecemeal adjacent easements is ridiculous, no matter who has to pony up the cash / do the acquisition.
If it's that "rural" and new utilities is going to benefit everyone, why not just get a wider row and put everything inside it? Water, gas, electric, communications, etc.
It's Oregon. I though you guys liked government? Fixing your easements/row problems seems like a good fit for gov't?
Unless i'm missing the bigger picture?
"Unless i’m missing the bigger picture?"
35 miles of right of way acquisition would be on the county dime. Acquiring these easements is the utility's expense.
Despite my remark, I did follow that part.
When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. That's the way it's always been done. And that seems like what is continuing to happen. That doesn't mean it's right or good.
A different way, a more consistent and possibly better, more permanent way would be to expand the right of way. All done with the stroke of a pen. The state did it before. In fact they did it a lot. And they didn't seem to mind how many ever number of times cited in that reference document.
Gov't. Always making things more complicated. Never making things better. If we didn't have them to create our problems, who would we elect to fix our problems?
"A different way, a more consistent and possibly better, more permanent
way would be to expand the right of way. All done with the stroke of a
pen. The state did it before. In fact they did it a lot."
Re-read the Fifth Amendment. Property owners have a right to "just compensation" for land taken as right of way. Land cannot be taken in this country by a simple "stroke of the pen".
In a more urban/dense residential area private utilities were often placed in ROWs and given franchises/licenses to operate in a public way. But even that is changing. We recently completed a massive project through the city center moving the local gas provider outside the downtown ROW's as much as possible. Even public utilities sometimes wish to be outside the ROW.
It depends on each situation, mostly water/sewer collection and distribution lines (public utilities) will be in the ROW but a large Water transmission line will normally be cutting across rural landowners. And electric/data/gas/oil lines (private utilities) in rural areas will wish to run outside highway ROWs.
An aside there was a famous court case in a midwestern state that stopped a fiber optic line from running inside the Highway ROW. The underlying landowners sued because they claimed the utility was not covered by the dedication of the public ROW as a "Highway Purpose". Locally we laid out a fiber line just after that court ruling in the Interstate highway which was state fee ownership so not covered by the ruling.
Eminent Domain, condemnation, rural land, pennies on the dollar, simple, effective, and consistent.
One of the reasons they have that power.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
@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.
