"What makes you think that because a ROW was expanded, that anyone has to move anything?"
Utilities do not just get to use rights of way for free. When a public utility has its facilities inside a public right of way it has to pay a proportion of its revenue to the governing public agency.
This is truly bizarre to me. I'm trying to envision a case where eminent domain for row is appropriate and PUC utilities should be outside the new right of way. With new residential construction it makes sense, but that's not normally an eminent domain situation.
My first personal encounter with this issue goes back to my early years of serving on a Rural Water District Board of Directors. We had a case where the landowner had refused to give us an easement for placing a main water line for half a mile. The line was installed in the county road r-o-w. Then the County had to rework a small bridge. Our line had to be moved (at our expense) for them to do what they had to do. Fortunately, there was a new landowner who was willing to give us an easement for an area around the bridge.
So, in the area where the OP is working, what happens in the case of a fire hydrant sticking up above ground?
Water lines (also sanitary & storm) are typically owned by the public agency and not by a franchise utility. So the useage fees are a nullity.
And, in some cases it makes sense for the franchise utilities to use the right of way and pay the fees. So it goes. They make a business decision. Nevertheless, the main point in this sub-thread is that it takes much - much - much more than the "stroke of a pen" to acquire additional right of way.
So, let me see if I have the story straight. In general, in Oregon: water, sanitary, and storm are "public"; electric and gas are "private"; you have franchise agreements dictating public policy for regulated and unregulated public utilities; and you're still worried about money.
All this while bending over backwards to defend the status quo, because it's the only thing folks are familiar with and think it's the best thing since sliced bread, despite the inherent problems/hypocrisy built into the system, which doesn't seem to matter.
I'm not arguing about the way things are. I'm arguing about a legal way to deal with that steaming pile of yuck that most can't seem to wrap their head around. ED exists. It can be used. It has been used. We're all adults, and I'm not sorry people don't like it.
You're still missing the big picture: Why the disparate difference between the implimentation of "public services from public utilities"? Sounds like the people of Oregon are getting bent over the barrel.
Oh, and one other thing... found monuments don't always control!
The monument is the utility cabinet per the OP. All the rest of the information leads to the cabinet. The cabinet is the center of the easement along the road ROW and the ROW is the bound. Pretty simple. I thought all these adds for ED was for some other issue??
"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."
That statement alone tells me yours is not a company that should be supplying legally descriptive land information. I also can't imagine a GIS department that would take multi-zone state information as an extension of one zone, or if they do, what kind of crap they produce as well. I hope all their GIS specialists are aware of this.
Regarding your sketch, even for a sketch that's accompanied by hopefully a much more descriptive deed, the first few things that stood out are: No real boundary info anywhere. Even the "right of way" is described as the "as traveled way". These aren't exchangeable terms. A distance of 1294' explicitly implies that it's +/- 0.5'. Is that acceptable? No distance or course shown from POB... or along any of the easement bounds for that matter. A N49dE 10.00' is pointing to the SC (?) Not sure what that means. There are several more issues. I think a map that leaves even one item up to obvious interpretation ior has dependant ties that are not secure s not finished, and this has many.
This thread got really strange.
My first personal encounter with this issue goes back to my early years of serving on a Rural Water District Board of Directors. We had a case where the landowner had refused to give us an easement
In WA, a water district can take via eminent domain. Makes it easy to create parcels when they want to buy a chunk of land from an owner.
I submit tons of easements to local and county agencies, the descriptions and exhibits are always reviewed and the drawings are required to be in State Plane so that they fall into the local and county GIS cartoons.
There are a lot of comments in this thread discussing ED. Some stating pennies on the dollar compensation and others somehow thinking that the affected property owners are all going to just lay down and resign themselves to the fact that the public agency was going to win and that's not always the case.
When I was a kid/young teen, there was a case where the NJDOT wanted to widen a state highway. At/near an intersection sat a local bar, Good Year tire store and a frozen custard stand where a jughandle was proposed. The owner of the bar also owned the tire store, and he was not having any part of selling his properties to the state for demolition. He was a feisty elderly man who was often featured on the National Geographic TV show on safari hunts. His name was Vernon Moses, and he fought the state off until the day that he died, over 10 years of litigation.
He defeated the State, but, in the end, his estate ended up selling the tire store property and forcing the NJDOT to do a redesign to save the bar in his honor. 50 years later that bar still stands and operates as a very successful and popular watering hole.
One more reason you have no fear of me ever moving to Washington, or Oregon, or California, or..............
Not to be beating a dead horse, but this summary of an eminent domain proceeding has come across my desk this morning. And this was for a simple corner cut off triangle at an intersection.
What's your point?
This case started on 4/5/2002 and the proceedings were completed on 10/2/2002.
That's 181 days.
One plaintiff *defendant* settled out of court, and the City of Beaverton prevailed on a Default Judgment against the other.
Judge Nachtigal retired on 9/1/2013 and Judge McElligott died on 12/21/2012.
