California Surveyors Forums

Is it appropriate for a Land surveyor to add "verbage" to a road easement description, which states "preservation of cross drainage rights"

This is in reference to a private road adjacent to one property line, whereby the neighbor has no "right" to the road but the owner of the road wishes to have "rights" to continue drainage of natural flow (by use of new culverts) ONTO the non-users land. [puzzling I know]

It has been accepted on natural flow range land, that drainage onto a neighbors land does not conflict with laws. Sometimes such drainage is encouraged by the owner of the low lands, to fill artificial stock ponds.

I don't want to write verbage that somehow gets recorded, without the lower neighbor's knowledge and acceptance. AND not really sure if such verbage shouldn't be written by an attorney ?

Any thoughts ?

Good,

I would be cautious. California drainage law is very complex. In my locale, the person proposing to construct the road culverts in the natural drainage course would have to demonstrate through an engineering hydrology/hydraulic analysis that there are no impacts to upstream and downstream properties when comparing pre and post construction drainage charecteristics (i.e. incease in depth of flow, erosion, velocity, etc). If there are changes that can't be mitigated, we require a drainage acceptance covenant between property owners that gets notarized and recorded on the property. These drainage covenants have been reviewed by our legal counsel.

Sub,

Thanks !
In spite of the objections by the "developer" ie road constructor, It seemed very obvious to me that a road with culverts is no longer "natural drainage" but rather non-natural channeled flow.

He claims that the culverts are only going at existing low points so therefor, there is no change. ???

I will stick to my opinion that any such cross-drainage agreements / verbage, should be prepared by an attorney or the owners themselves.

I realize that tough economic times, call for "requested" short-cuts, but truely in 5 years, when someones land gets flooded, guess who will get the blame.

Thanks again for the response.

"Hanging by a thread"