This is so familiar. I used to work for the power company and always had to deal with some inflamed ego. “You’re not coming into MY yard.” Oh yes I am, and there’s nothing you can do about it. “You’re not going to trim MY tree.” Fine, but when your area is the last to have power restored during an outage because your refusal automatically bumped you to lowest priority, you’ll be calling the power company whining about where YOUR electricity is. Easements are a fact of life for all property owners who wish to have running water, electricity, sweage lines or cable. Get over it. That said, they should be respectful of your property. If there is damage from the spray paint that is permanent you should pursue compensation. But it’s really best if you act reasonable. Acting like a jerk means you get labeled as a “problem customer” and they will treat you as such.
So now I’m a jerk because I want an explanation for flags in my yard? For the record, I have not forbidden them access to my property. I asked for an explanation, expressed dissatisfaction that the flags were put in my yard with no notice, and will be keeping an eye to make sure anything they do is repaired and/or replaced.
Yeesh.
The town where my dad lives allowed cheap-ass sewage pipes from the house to the main sewage line out in the street. Forty years later, nearly everyone in the town had toilet problems and they had to pay a company to tear up the yard…house to street…to get new pipe installed. When you go up and down the streets, you see the tell-tale strip of dirt in the lawn. Some were repaired fairly nicely, but many still show the signs of the grass being replaced with shitty, weedy grass all these years later.
Long story short, don’t expect too much in the way of a repair job once they tear up your property.
OTOH, the City where I used to work took great pains to make sure any dirtwork was finished out completely and sod relaid smoothly. Heck, they even would buy different sod for different yards - whatever sod matched your grass. I’ve seen a lot of yards dug up and replaced - and you’d never even know the City had been in there. So don’t fret. Just be calm and firm. And, take the “before” pictures.
As to the easement question - I’ve also seen easements in some wacky places. I even saw a builder build a house over the sewer line. :eek: If you have your deed it should be in there. If your house is in a subdivision it will be indicated on the plat - a copy of which is at City Hall.
Here’s an example of a water line easement (not too good, sorry).
The gas company has dug up the easment in front of my house twice to repair the main and to install anti-corrosion anodes. The backhoe operator replaced the dirt and sod both times, and I was impressed that they did as good of repair as they did while using heavy equipment. After a heavy watering the yard completely healed within a few weeks. Cable and telecom lines aren’t dug as deeply and those guys sometimes do all of their digging by hand. The results may or may not be as good, but any excavation will probably be on a smaller scale.
FWIW, Tripler, I’ll back you up about being wary when digging in the dirt. A friend’s father died when he cut into an unmarked gas line with his backhoe. A few shots of spray paint would have made a world of difference.
I have to add that in my area when the cable company ran cables to replace existing cables they dug the ground up at an angle, put the cable down and then the grass fell back into place. When they finished you could not tell they ever dug anywhere.
What **NinetyWt ** and Polycarp said.
Easements give another party certain rights to properties that are not their own. This is a complicated legal area (what isn’t, these days?), and what follows is a very simplistic explanation from a non-lawyer.
Permanent easements are usually used for utilities (above or below ground) that allow the municipality or utility company access to maintain, repair or replace their utility. As **polycarp ** explained earlier, you are not allowed to place anything within the permanent easement that will impede the access to this utility. This might include larger plants or trees, buildings or structures. If you do have these within the permanent easement, you run the risk of losing them without having them replaced.
Temporary easements may be necessary to construct the utility (to maneuver equipment, provide a larger trench, store materials, etc.). Once the construction is complete, the property reverts to the original owner. This is usually for the convenience of the municipality or contractor, and they are typically more responsive to the replacement of damaged property.
From what I read here, it seems that there is currently a utility (telephone/cable) on your property. I have never heard of flags or markings being placed for future locations of utilities; only for existing locations. It might be worth a trip to your Registry of Deeds or equivalent to determine whether there is an easement across your property for that utility. If there is, you are likely SOL. It may have been in place when the land was subdivided and the roads and properties were laid out. There will be wording within the description of the easement that will spell out their rights, and what your responsibilities are as a property owner.
While you’re at it, verify that your property line is where you think it is. There may be bounds at the property corners. Typically, most folks think that their property extends to the edge of street pavement, when occasionally it can actually stop twenty or thirty feet short of that.
If there is no easement, that doesn’t get you out of the woods, but it puts more onus on the utility. If the utility has been in place on your property for some time, they may just refuse to relocate it. They may not have the right to be where they are, but they’ll fight you anyway, and probably wear you down. At the very least, they should file an easement for your land now to avoid this in the future. Because this is now an encroachment on your land after the fact, and is depriving you of the use of part of your land, you may be able to claim damages from this.
Either way, you have the right to have your land restored to pre-existing conditions (less any proscriptions that may be in the easement).
Best of luck.
Our house is like 120+ years old. The original plat had our property line all the way to the yellow line in the road. Then, with progress and cars and all, they put in a road and basically took a lane’s worth of land from the parcel. Then they put an easement thingy in, I guess. Someone along the line planted The Ugly Hedge that we assume is the boundary of our actual property There is also an access road on either side of our land that (I think) run all the way down to the river. There are utility lines and that sort of thing. The neighbor uses that access road as a driveway, but they have to allow utility traffic to access their stuff if need be. The other road is used by cops and forest preserve guys.
In some cases, if a utility has been in place for a certain number of years, a “prescriptive” easement can be argued - kind of like “it’s been here so long withough dispute that an easment can now be claimed”. That’s what the City attorney said in the event that an ancient water/sewer/storm drain - not in any recorded easement - needed repair.
There is something very similar in this area: “Easement by prescription”, which (to my limited understanding) involves “the open and notorious use” of another’s property for an extended period of time (typically twenty years). I’ve often seen the word “hostile” thrown in there, but my guess is that that may not mean hostile in the sense that we interpret it. I’ve seen this invoked in several situations, such as occupying another’s property with a building, or the use of a driveway or path. I’ve not seen it specifically used for utililities (probably because an underground utility is not an open use), but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it is possible.
I do know that it can’t be invoked on public lands. So, the town can claim an easement on your land if they have an historic use of that land, but you can’t put a cabin deep in the Town forest, and then claim it for your own twenty years later.