Monumenting Lines With Jogs
I don't mind pin farms as long as they land on the land described. All lines are required to by monumented in most areas we work in. Could you remove the northern PC from C1 and straighten out the angle points between L4, L5, L6 and L7 and still meet your clients needs? That's the only way i can see to lessen the # of monuments.
The toe of the berm is not a natural monument and the way that the easement description may or may not change when the course of the canal does.
You're right that it's not a natural monument since the berm is manmade, but highways are manmade and can be monuments...
And yeah the easement is basically wherever the canal is.
The irrigation companies that manage these canals drive down the maintenance roads with a trackhoe every once in a while and groom the embankments so yeah I think both the canal and the road move slightly over time due to that, erosion, etc.
I might simply call out the toe, setting a cap on it with a witness corner at the begin and end of the toe and describe it with B&D at the time of the survey. Treat it like a stream and if it's visible it's simple to follow in the field as a boundary. The caps along the way will leave the toe over time so it's just a snapshot of the toe the day it's capped, which can add ambiguity, where the call to the toe is clear. And I would include a reference in the description and the drawing that the calls along the toe are subservient to shifting of the toe location.
I encounter a LOT of boundaries tied to physical features of canals. The irrigation entities invariably treat them like an ambulatory boundary. In one case, they attempted to eject a farmer from the family home because it was 'within the easement'. They found out the hard way that canals are not riparian boundaries.
Without some very specific language, the toe (if called for) at the time of parcel creation is the line. If it moves, it is a disturbed monument. If the line as pinned is clearly identified as the line, it should prevent a lot of fights down the road..
@OleManRiver Unless he specifically wants that toe monumented. With rebar or whatever. Just let the toe be the monument along the toe etc.
I'm in Idaho like WA ID and like he says lines are required to be monumented. I'm not really a fan of referencing something that moves around anyway.
@WA-ID Surveyor Could you remove the northern PC from C1 and straighten out the angle points between L4, L5, L6 and L7 and still meet your clients needs? That’s the only way i can see to lessen the # of monuments.
I can live with the number of monuments that were set, but I don't think the farmer wants to get any further from the toe than what it currently is.
In fact he told me a fence has already been built along this line (pins are set but survey yet to be recorded) and I was like dude... tell me about that first so we could have maybe stuck some lath out there to help you with this. The C1 curve is 363' long and I'm assuming the fence is basically on the chord which means there's already a discrepancy...
@MightyMoe And I would include a reference in the description and the drawing that the calls along the toe are subservient to shifting of the toe location.
I think the farmer thinks the toe won't move.
@thebionicman The irrigation entities invariably treat them like an ambulatory boundary.
That's how I tended to view them as well. The language I've seen on the department of water resources website and elsewhere seems to be pretty open-ended as far as what the irrigation entities can claim. Sounds like courts have knocked them down a peg or two in the past though?
My wife's family land is a mess in that the legal parcels do not line up with the creek, road, and usage, among other problems. She and her brother divided it by parcels when settling their mother's estate, but she owns ~3 or 4 acres of his cornfield, etc. I would like to have it replatted so the parcels made sense.
My question is: if I talk them i to it, would it make sense to ask for a riparian boundary along the lowest channel of the rather deep creek?
I mostly see reference to riparian boundaries in connection with rivers, so don't know if that would be "normal" here.
Bill, here's a photo of a riparian boundary from my area. Definitely not a major river. As an intermittent stream, it has a clearly defined channel and enough flow to prevent the vibrant New England vegetation from taking root. It's stood the test of time as a boundary monument for well over 50 years.
@bill93 My question is: if I talk them i to it, would it make sense to ask for a riparian boundary along the lowest channel of the rather deep creek?
I would suggest having the surveyor topo the top of bank on each side and then calculate an average centerline based on that. That's probably what the adjoiners are actively occupying anyway, right? And that way the surveyor can set reference monuments 10 or 15 or however many feet away where they won't get washed out.
Canal companies take a regular beating for attempting to steal land. I have to say it tickles me pink to see it happen. It is unfortunate the most common accomplice The Surveyor) rarely gets taken to task.
My take on canals is simple. We cannot apply the laws written to deal with natural water bodies to artificial bodies just because they look and act a bit alike. When irrigation works are called for in a deed they are treated like any other artificial monument. The position at parcel creation controls. If the owner tolerates movement for the prescriptive period, easement rights may arise. This requires a specific fact pattern, and the boundary does not move as the easement rights ripen.
Boundaries controlled by canals require extensive research. The older the parcel, the more research you can expect to perform. You may find the original location cannot be found with certainty. Most jump straight from reading the deed to making that determination. They take land from one person and assign it to another. That's not surveying.
Ditches and canals are covered by statute here. There is a statutory easement granted, so it doesn't matter if they shift position, they are still inside the easement. But then water rights are a whole nuther subject for surveying. One interesting factoid is that if the ditch is buried and the conveyance is now transported through a pipe that pipe line needs an easement when the open ditch didn't.
