Clay,

 

I have been in contact with Mark Orbeck at TRA.  He is working for the
past week on gathering the information he has available on the two meter
stations.

 

Primarily, what I am looking for is evidence of an existing easement.
We periodically come across old utility lines for which the original
easement documents cannot be found. In some of these cases, the
construction plans show an easement; however, there's no guarantee that
an easement was recorded.  

 

If a City needs to maintain the existing utility, they typically have a
prescriptive right to do so. However, when we've been retained to
prepare construction plans to replace an old utility line, our City
clients usually obtain a new easement from the impacted property owners.

 

The best source of easement documents are City records. Alternatively,
we can obtain plats from the County if the utility crosses platted
tracts. However, if the utility crosses an unplatted tract, the
abstracter we use to research County records very rarely finds the
utility easement documents unless we have the recording information.
The record drawings you gave me for the Inwood location shows an
easement, the Spring Valley location does not.  It's possible that
addition information is shown on other related record drawings. 

 

In the case of the easements you need for TRA, we have a couple of
suggestions:

1.                   Prepare and obtain new easements for TRA.

2.                   Check the Town's records for the existing easements
or the recording information. If found, check with the Town's attorney
to find out if a portion of the easement granted to the Town can be
assigned to TRA. We can then prepare survey documents for the assignment
which would avoid the need to purchase new easements from the property
owners.

 

Thank you,

Chris Robinson, P.E.

Grantham & Associates

1919 S. Shiloh

Suite #440, LB 8

Garland, TX 75042

972-864-2333 ext. 121

214-869-8912 cell

972-864-2334 fax