New Water Line Easement

[blindman]

I'm not sure whether this is the best place to post this or not...

Our local utility company is forcing an easement onto the property owners along an approximately 10 mile stretch of highway where all road frontage of my property lies. The permanent easement of 30 feet begins at the edge of the highway right-of-way that is 20 feet from the center of the two lane road. There is also a temporary easement of an additional 20 feet for construction. The easement is being forced upon us to support the installation of a new 36 inch water line. So, the permanent easement will be 50 feet from the center of the road with the temporary easement totaling 70 feet from the center of the road.

I am fully on board with the utility company that the water line is necessary but I am not convinced such a wide permanent easement is required. I feel that the permanent easement is extremely excessive for this size water line, but have been completely unsuccessful finding facts to prove it. Does anyone have related experience or know if easement standards exist for this size water line construction / installation? Can anyone point me in the right direction for research on this issue?

Thanks in advance,

blindman

[suemarkp]

Usually one damper on government takings is the fact that they need to provide compensation for what they take. So are you getting anything in exchange for the taking of your property rights? If they take less, they should compensate you less.

Instead of paying you, they may choose to lower your taxes on the land you can't really use because of the easement.

[Wgoodrich]

Legal easements like National construction codes have local governmental amendments to those state or federal rules. In my local jurisdiction when a legal easement is created even in farm fields just for a storm drainage line the easement is created with 25 foot easement on both sides of the actual drain or other utility. Power companies also set up width but they tend to be more like 15 feet on each side of thier utility infrastructure. I would say you probably have the norm when talking easement design. However there is good and bad of legal easements for land owners. First if it is grass you are requried to keep it mowed. If it is a sidewalk you are required to keep it in good condition and also liable for accidents for anyone walking on that public sidewalk easement. While a farmer can plant corn throughout the easement if an outage happens with the public utility for that easement occurs that utility company can enter the field and destroy the crops needed to repair the utility of that easement regardless of cost damage to owner and can be done without further permission of the original land owner. This sounds bad but consider you being served water for your home and the water pipe fails needing repair. If the utility had to have permission to enter private land before they can repair you will be out of water for a long time. This is why easements are created governed by your local governed rules of law.

When an easement is forced onto private land it is done by eminant domain. The public utility forcing this easement must pay the normal rate to the original owner for the damages done during the construction. This can range from 2 years crop damage to several thousand dollars. Problem is the commission paying compensation most often sets the value of damages occurring to that home owner.

Best I have for you

Wg

[blindman]

Thanks for the responses. Two standard rates per acre, one for the permanent easement and one for the temporary construction easement are being used to calculate the compensation offered to the landowner. These do not take into account any consideration of the actual individual property values. Exceptions to these rates will have to be pursued on a case by case basis.

Based on Wg's comments, I feel a little more comfortable with the "required" easement size. Perhaps they are not excessive. I have always wished my home was further off the highway... now I'm wishing that even more.

Thanks again!

[pushkins]

A couple of years ago Marathon Oil went through Columbus Ohio and torn down any tree within 50' of there lines. Cause a huge big stink but they had every right in the world to do it under their easement rights. I remember seeing the CEO of Marathon defending their right to chop down all these big trees people had planted on (what they thought was ) their property. This case is a little different to yours these people bough homes with that easement already in place, in your case they are adding on to it, but it's kinda along the lines of they do it cause the can attitude.

[Wgoodrich]

Eminent domain is commonly justified by saying it is required for the good of the majority of the people in the community. Then again some states allow eminent domain to be used to take property to build a new factory etc. This in my opinion is big business not respecting rights of the land owners but doing it to make money. I am convinced this practice of private business using eminent domain to take private land is wrong. I can live with utilities governed by utility regulatory commissions and government but not big business for profit.

Wg

[suemarkp]

I agree, but unfortunately the Supreme Court does not. The Kelo -vs- US case a few years back was shocking to me. The court found it was OK for a local government to take you land and for the purpose of a private developer to build something else "better". The local governments benefited by having a large for-profit business on a given plot of land because of the taxes they would generate. The homes that were condemned were seen as not generating enough revenue and demanding too many services.

The landowners still had to be compensated, but I don't like the idea either of a government deciding that one private entity is better than another. I'd also like to see compensation at say 125% of true value. That way, some people may actually like to be condemned. But then I could see the politicians telling their friends to buy up areas where they plan to condemn so they can get a 25% windfall.