California Surveyors Forums

You client grants a piece of land to a local water district on 2002, 5.5 acre site, via metes and bounds description tied to a street centerline (and nothing else).
District builds a water tank around that time.
A record of survey is filed in 2004 with the intent to monument the deed, by a reputable surveyor.

We are surveying the remaining property for suburban development developed in 2022 (approved tentative map).
Monuments which control my street, an old section line fit nicely (+/-0.02' to 0.03').

I re-establish the street from monuments.

Lay out the grant deed from record, which fits found street monuments found during my 2022 field survey.

I compare the deed calc to found monuments from the 2004 record of survey, and out of 11 monuments forming a somewhat irregular slightly circular polygon around the water tank site, about half of them are not fitting by 0.5' (+/- a tenth), the rest are under a tenth.

Everything around the water tank is open land, agricultural, area is zoned for suburban development. None of the monuments appear disturbed, no obvious evidence of ground movement, minor landslide activity. Most monuments are on a fairly steep downslope into a natural arroyo, about 20 feet elevation change with visible fast drainage erosion where you can see past the vegetation (heavy brush up to 10 feet tall over natural ground). Most of poorly fitting monuments are in this area. There are no obvious lines of occupation near the boundary, water tank structures start at least 20 feet away.

This is a part of a survey covering two sections. All other monumentation (roughly 60 other monuments) fit very well ( tenth or better ) as far back as 1960's. Even those where I have 400' vertical change between section corners.

I haven't made up my mind yet, but I am inclined to call those 0.5' to 0.3' monuments off instead of accepting them.

Thoughts, discussion?

I think you pretty well described disturbed monuments.

I could probably go either way. If the intent of the record survey was to monument the district water tank conveyance and the monuments have been blessed by both parties of the transaction then they could be considered original survey establishment. If half of the monuments are sliding downhill then that could be considered avulsive movement or gradual, depending on the circumstance. I've held old monuments that were sliding down the hill before, if the environment is rural and the 0.5' doesn't affect anyone negatively then why not?

Mostly for me it would come down to whether the 0.5' is meaningful to anyone (w/r/t land value, existing or proposed improvements). If so, I might have a conversation with both parties to inform them of the situation and my intended resolution. If there is any objection then deal with that

If I am the only one who cares about the 0.5' of slop then I have a much easier solution for that

Browsing the old threads and this one had me wondering what did you decide to do CBarrett?

It was easy to determine they were 0.5 off, so that means there is not a precision issue, or alternate options, no long history, likely no other documents built on them, no obvious reliance by owners for fixed works, and lastly but most importantly, they are not controlling.

Kinda sounds like a perfect spot for doing the "unthinkable" and pulling the monuments that are not in the correct spot?.... Leaving them would just be a pin cushion situation, since I can't see how from your original post they should be held?

Mikey Mueller, PLS
Sonoma County

I would probably end up holding them. Just show what you measured.

I had to look up and see what we did. I ended up holding monuments and showing M, R data after discussing it with couple other surveyors at the office.
Especially since the monuments were pushing into our side of the property by a tenth or two, and into the open space area which had enough excess square footage to give up the 15-30 square feet of land change this may have caused. With the land developers' blessing. This way if anyone has the same dilemma, we are setting the precedent in accepting these monuments as set. If we insisted on the land as dedicated in the deed, then our neighbors land would be slightly short of monuments. Being that it is a water district with a water tank site and a dirt road, it is unlikely there would be an argument over 0.4', but in the future if there are additional improvements, it seemed preferable to pull back and give them room to breathe, and not create a potential conflict.
We are developing two sections worth of land next door, so peace is better than insisting on few tenths of land.
We documented measured vs. record and indicated that we accepted those monuments as limit of our land.
I know potentially if someone decides to hold the record data over the monuments, it would create a gap, however now there are two maps agreeing that these monuments represent the deed, so quite possibly it diminishes the potential of a gap.

Calling the monuments off would have added a number of complications, especially since the explicit purpose of the underlying RS was to monument the deed, which may be taken as the assumption of 'ownership being taken based on monuments'. One may argue that the RS did not convey the title, but considering that the deed and the RS are contemporaneous, I think the RS is a good indicator of the deed intent.

Just to add, if we were to call any of the monuments off, we would not pull them, the monument then becomes an accessory to the corner, with a documented relationship to the corner, so while the monument may not be indicative of where the corner is, corner can be easily located (calced) by locating the monument.

Remember, the last property you should survey, is the one you are working on. Everything else gets surveyed first.