They survey the landscape By Kevin Turner, News-Leader

Past and current professional land surveyors of Nassau County gathered on Monday to recognize National Surveyors Week.

Included; Mark Hill, Ken Drake, Carl Mitchell, Michael Manzie, Frank Bowen, Vernon Drake, Hal Belcher, Steve Hoffman and Jim Peacock. Mike Manzie is aiming to know publicise the world s second-oldest profession.

"There is nothing that is built that doesnt need a surveyor," said Manzie, who is with the Fernandina Beach firm Manzie and Drake. "Every land transaction and building needs a survey."

"We do elevation work for flood zones for (the Federal Emergency Management Agency), as people need to know if they need flood insurance," Manzie added. "On the beach, we locate the coastal construction control line.

Their work extends to highways and roads, streets, drainage and sewer lines. Any engineered infrastructure is surveyed as part of its engineering. Manzie said. "We re the first in and also the last out" on any construction project. "When the job is completed, we need to check it to make sure they built it according to plan."

Yet, not many people know why they often see people in reflective jackets, using a device on a tripod. "Hopefully Surveyors Week will bring awareness to people to the profession and to what we do,"

The measurements of surveyors are commonly listed in legal documents describing where land is located, how much area it covers and exactly where its boundaries are located. "We use traditional methods in conjunction with (the Global Positioning System)." It s highly accurate and uses frequencies on the ground and by satellite. The GPS is integral it is very expensive, but very accurate."

NAVOCEANO surveyors assist New Horizons mission in Haiti.

By LANEE COOKSEY from NAVAL OCEANOGRAPHIC OFFICE

In December, shortly before the Southeast Asian tsunami, NAVOCEANO was tasked to conduct a beach clearance survey in Haiti. Similar to NAVOCEANO personnel working in Southeast Asia, the group was interested in identifying hazards to navigation in the Gulf of Gonaïves area and navigation clearance for the relief effort.

The channel needed to be surveyed before U.S. Navy relief ships such as USS Saipan could unload 1,200 tons of supplies, equipment and 50 Seabees on land. Securing the safety of navigation was the duty of NAVOCEANO s Ian Fergusson, Skip Derry, Wally Stout and Lt. Cdr. Chris Sterbis.

On Dec. 30, the group packed their survey equipment and drove to St. Petersburg, Fla., to meet Venturous RHIB, a Coast Guard cutter, to sweep the channel area of the Gulf of Gonaïves, Haiti. Within seven days, the team used sidescan sonar, global positioning systems and a single-beam echosounder to successfully create the field charts they were requested to provide.

Different from other charts, field charts are produced and distributed for special circumstances. In this case, it was the drastic changes in the Haitian coastline because of the 2004 hurricanes. Because of the work of the NAVOCEANO team and the cooperation of the Venturous crew, the USS Saipan successfully unloaded its supplies in early February, and the Seabees were able to start rebuilding schools, drilling wells and providing other assistance.

AIRBORNE 1 CAPTURES CALIFORNIA LANDSCAPE DATA FOR LA CONCHITA EL SEGUNDO, CA

Airborne 1 Corporation has surveyed over five square miles of key landslide stricken areas through La Conchita by quick, high resolution LiDAR "Light Detection and Ranging" data for generating digital terrain maps.

The companys airborne laser terrain sensor was used to map at up to one-foot contours, giving detailed images of the coastal area affected by Californias severe rainstorms several weeks ago. The topographic data gathered will be useful for helping local and federal agencies analyse their options in mitigating potential risks and coordinate the cleanup efforts in the area following this California coastal towns January mudslide.

Todd Stennett, founder and president of Airborne 1 stated,

“The data we have collected in La Conchita provides detailed baselines of the communitys changing landscape, which are useful for agencies such as FEMA, land developers, and other organizations that want to rebuild this area and provide relief to the towns residents.

Airborne 1 La Conchita data can be made available to federal, state, and local agencies, including academia and non-government organizations studying the area. Agencies that want to obtain access to the La Conchita data and other LiDAR images throughout California and the greater United States”.

Contact at www.airborne1.com/.

BORDER MATTER SETTLED

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources Land Survey Program, along with the Arkansas Land Commissioners Land Survey Division, have combined to resolve a long-running concern over the location of the state boundary line between Missouri and Arkansas.

This was accomplished by locating the marks of the 1848 survey and restoring those positions with new markers and monuments. They generally consisted of a 36-inch long by 2.5-inch diameter aluminium pipe with a 3 inch diameter aluminium cap, stamped to mark the position. With the new markers in place, future surveyors and landowners along the state line will find it easier to locate property boundaries.

This boundary line was first established in 1848 by surveyors on foot, horseback and in wagons. They set boundary markers with mounds of soil, wood posts and witness trees blazed and scribed to identify the mileposts. The state-of-the-art at the time used a surveyor s compass and a Gunter 33-foot chain. Although the accuracy of the boundary didn t meet the standards of today, the result of the 1848 survey remains the location of the Missouri-Arkansas state boundary line.

Today, what we now see as primitive methodology has given way to electronic distance measurement, computer technology and the use of the global positioning system (GPS). This provides surveyors the ability to measure very accurately.

According to Mike Flowers, state land surveyor and the Land Survey Program director with the department s Geological Survey and Resource Assessment Division (GSRAD), "The boundary line was brought to our attention about three years ago. The first request came from the Missouri Department of Transportation and two county surveyors from Barry and McDonald Counties."

In question was the intersection at Route 71 as it crosses into Arkansas just north of the Bella Vista Resort area. This was followed by requests from private landowners to look at the boundary east of this location.

"The more we evaluated, not only was it necessary to resurvey those specific areas, but there appeared to be a genuine need for resurveying the entire stretch between the southwest corner of the state, a bit south of Southwest City, and extending east to the community of Seilgman in Barry County," Flowers continued. "Three years later, having conducted all of the work, we have arrived at the completion of this project."

http://www.dnr.mo.gov/geology/. contact Mike Flowers at (573) 368-2301.

SURVEYORS UNVEIL CONFLUENCE MONUMENT

By Crysta Parkinson, News editor

In honour of the original surveyors of the west, a new monument was unveiled Saturday outside the new Lewis & Clark Interpretive Centre.

When the local surveyors heard monuments were being established at key points along the Lewis and Clark trail, they decided they wanted to get involved. "Lewis and Clark were the original land surveyors of the western expansion," organizer Troy Jensen said. It only seemed fitting that the modern land surveyors should be involved in the bicentennial celebration.

The confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers, located 20 west of Williston, was chosen as the ideal spot for the new monument. "Right here at the confluence is a pretty significant spot," Jensen said.

The project was a cooperative effort of the North Dakota Society of Professional Land Surveyors (Missouri Breaks Chapter) and the Montana Association of Registered Land Surveyors (Northeast Chapter). Jensen is the vice president of the Montana Association, and a member of the chapters on both sides of the state line.

The end result was a concrete monument that is seven feet deep and 24 inches in diameter, surrounded by native stones and topped with a 4-inch bronze survey marker. It formally marks the historic location.

"The marker represents the handshake of the explorers and Native Americans," Jensen said.

Similar markings are placed or will be placed at sites along the expedition route. Jensen said there are already monuments in Great Falls, Mont., and Mandan, N.D.

The confluence monument will be dedicated on April 30, part of a weekend celebration planned to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Lewis and Clark s arrival at the confluence and their entry into what is now the state of Montana.

As part of that dedication, Bill Weinkle, a surveyor in Missoula, will present a program in historic clothing depicting how Lewis and Clark were surveyors.

"It was a group effort," Jensen said. "We want to give a big thanks to everyone who was a part of it."

Once the idea was in place, labour and materials were donated by area businesses. Lower Yellowstone Electric Co-op in Sidney drilled the hole, Sidney Red-E-Mix poured the concrete, and mason Bernie Connor did the rock work.

SENATE AGREES NEW BILLS TO FACILITAT EFFICIENT LAND MANAGEMENT

BY BALFORD HENRY balfordh@jamaicaobserver.com

THE Senate has passed amendments to the Land Surveyors Act facilitating the Land Administration and Management Programme (LAMP) and updating the original act that came into being in 1944.

The bills facilitate, inter alia, the implementation of LAMP, particularly the use of cadastral mapping for the purpose of land registration, and replace references to the now defunct apprenticeship system for surveyors with the current system of attachment.

The opportunity was also taken to bring the penalties under the act in line with current trends.

The bill was piloted through the House of Representatives on March 1 by land and environment minister Dean Peart and through the Senate on March 18 by information minister Senator Burchell Whiteman.

Peart explained that it was another step in achieving the objectives of the National Land Policy, tabled in Parliament in 1996 to establish a framework for an efficient land management system, some aspects of which were being implemented through LAMP.

One of the activities of LAMP was the production of a section of the cadastral map of Jamaica, "a necessary tool for the improvement of land administration as it is used to define property boundaries and owners," Peart said.

To do so efficiently, the country must be able to leverage modern surveying technology such as Global Positioning Systems and Electronic Distance Metres. This, he added, was the primary objective of the bill. LAMP was started in 2000 with funding from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to, initially, regularise the titling of some 30,000 lots in St Catherine.

After five years, however, the ministry admitted to Parliament s Public Accounts Committee in February that, so far, only about 18,000 lots had been identified for titling, creating some concern about this first phase of the project succeeding and impacting on future funding for the project.

The programme had already been extended from 2003 to 2005 and received over $100 million in external funding.

When the current financing ends on March 31, it is likely that the Government will have to take up the slack through to 2006, at least, when the ministry hopes to conclude this first phase.

COUNTY REMONUMENTATION SURVEYOR ADMITS WORK IS NOT GOSPEL

BY FRED GRAYNEWS-REVIEW STAFF WRITER

Richard Oelke, Emmet County s remonumentation representative, told the county board of commissioners Tuesday that while Bliss Township resident Nicole Perry had raised valid issues from the unexpected changes to her property lines, her attack on the state s remonumentation program is unwarranted.

Oelke said that short of reforming the Remonumentation Act, Perry had remedies that include:

Asking a court to resolve issues based on survey or real estate law, or on rights accumulated over time, such as adverse possession;

Appealing to the county s remonumentation committee to reconsider locations of government property markers by providing new evidence;

Asking the township to fund an "assessor s plat," through which a group of affected property owners can agree on new property lines that would in turn be recognized by a court.

Oelke said there are legal remedies for almost all problems that arise.

"She said we created this problem. Well, the problem is there. It s a matter of whether you find it or not. It s not going to go away. "Every day when we go into an area and do a survey, we find problems. That s why people hire us. Unfortunately, based on a survey, we uncover a lot more problems. Legal descriptions were prepared by homeowners, or by Realtors, or by attorneys, or sometimes by surveyors, so there are gaps and overlaps that have been created in a lot of cases."

He estimated that 90 percent of the properties that are sold in the county do not have the benefit of an adequate survey.

And Oelke points out changing a corner in light of new evidence is not a trivial thing: It may affect the property of 400 or 500 people in the area in a kind of domino effect.

"To move a line 100 or 200 feet would completely take away the rights of a whole bunch of people in another section, because each line is not only between two people but it affects everybody in a section," he said.

In Perry s case, Oelke said the DNR probably spent $100,000 or more on surveys trying to rehabilitate the markers, "and they appear to have succeeded," a conclusion that Perry hotly disputes.

As for the program itself, Oelke said remonumentation is just another term for what surveyors do in the private sector every day of the year. "We re licensed professionals. We re part of that remonumentation. It just happens to be a program now. The DNR surveyors are the same way," Oelke says.

Richard Oelke, Emmet County s remonumentation representative, is on the lookout for old township highway record books, especially those dated between 1880 and 1920, and survey maps up to 1972.

Oelke said that before the county road commission was established, township trustees were normally responsible for maintaining the roads in the townships. He said the trustees would make careful notations in the record books that would be invaluable to surveyors today.

Of the 16 townships in Emmet County the only record books Oelke knows still exist belonged to Maple River and Pleasantview townships.

Oelke also said people with old survey maps that may affect their property, especially if they were drawn by surveyors from out of the area who left the maps with their client-land owners, would also be invaluable.

He said none of the surveyors maps were recorded before 1972. A deed without a survey map often doesn t make sense, but a map with corner markers shown on it becomes a big piece of evidence in interpreting the deeds.

People with such evidence are invited to call Oelke at 526-2119.

He said the remonumentation program is an ongoing process for every surveyor as soon as he gets his license. "He is mandated to rehabilitate and to record all these corners he comes in contact with," Oelke said. “When surveyors are presented with new evidence - an old survey may surface or someone may recall what his grandfather once said about the location of a marker - they will discuss as a group the merits of the new evidence”.

"Not everything we do is Gospel. The bottom line is basically, the money s being provided to upgrade and update the existing survey markers that are there so they don t get lost. Those of us on the remonumentation committee felt our job was not to change things or mess around with survey lines, but was to try to figure out through research and work on the ground where that government corner was placed. In reality all surveying has to go back technically to those government corners. We re mandated by law to follow in the footsteps of the original patents, the original survey corners. But unfortunately there are areas of the county where there are more than one survey marker at a point, or in some cases there aren t any. So we would be faced with either figuring out which one of the two or three that were there really best represented the government s position, or if there was none there, we would place one at a point where we felt through law or through retracement of previous surveys, that point should be."

Oelke told Perry that some of her corners appeared to have been "pro-rated" in by a DNR surveyor who admitted that the corner is lost but is using a mathematical formula to put it back.

"Those corners have a potential for being anywhere, and if someone brought new evidence to light, I might not agree with the DNR surveyor who looked at it."

In 1990 the state Legislature passed the Michigan Survey and Remonumentation Act with a goal of rehabilitating some 300,000 property-defining government corners that were set in the 1840s, shortly after Michigan became a state.

Maynard Dyer, director of the program, told the News-Review this week that $41.8 million had been spent on the program so far and estimated it will have cost at least $160 million more by the time the 20 years authorized for the program have run.

Dyer said Michigan had a statute in the 1800s to rehabilitate the corners but it provided almost no funding, a shortcoming the Remonumentation Act of 1990 was designed to correct.

Richard Oelke, Emmet County s remonumentation representative, gave the county board a brief history of surveying in the area.

He said that shortly after Michigan became a state in 1837 surveyors began laying a grid on the ground and setting boundary marker posts every half mile that were used by the original landowners to mark their property, build fences and do their farming.

Oelke said most of the marker posts were made of cedar and over the next 40 to 50 years began to disintegrate and became increasingly hard to find.

By the turn of the 20th century the county had established a survey office with a trained person who surveyed different parts of the county. But by about 1915 or so the office was unfunded or abolished and for the next 40 to 50 years most of the survey markers were replaced, often by the people living on the land.

In the 1960s surveyors started moving into the area and surveys were done, based on new evidence about the original markers. Metal detectors made it easier to find points that had been set previously, particularly in road intersections.

In implementing the 1990 Remonumentation Act, the state decided to impose a $2 fee for documents filed with the county deeds offices to fund the program for rehabilitating the corners. The fee was later raised to $4 and the funds collected are now returned to the county for local remonumentation programs, such as the one Oelke directs.

Oelke said Emmet County currently collects about $30,000 a year in fees that are used for the program.

Part of the project consists of gathering all historical documents from the original surveys and obtaining the history of the marker before rehabilitating the corner, Oelke said.

Each county in Michigan has access to the original government surveys taken between 1809 and 1854, which can be used as reference maps. Surveyors face difficulties in locating some markers because of inaccurate maps, disputes over the location of original markers, the expansion and development of houses, buildings, roads and parking lots, and changing landscapes.

Oelke said surveyors use whatever means necessary to find these hidden markers including utilizing the latest technology in surveying, studying journals and maps from original surveyors, and even digging around in fields and woods.

So far, about 50,000 of Michigan s estimated 300,000 corners have been rehabilitated.

Fred Gray can be contacted at fgray@petoskeynews.com.

WHERE OIL IS MINED NOT PUMPED

High Demand for Petroleum Makes a Boomtown in FORT McMURRAY, Northern Alberta

By Justin Blum Washington Post Staff Writer

Along Highway 63, the rolling hills give way to massive open pits, huge waste ponds tangles of pipes and refining equipment that spew smoke into the air. In the pits, shovel trucks load dirt into dump trucks that are so gigantic a driver has to climb a ladder attached to the front grille to get behind the steering wheel. The changing landscape reflects an ambitious quest to develop a new source of oil.

Major companies -- faced with tougher prospects for developing big new oil fields around the world -- are doing what was once unthinkable: sinking billions of dollars into projects to wring oil out of deposits of petroleum buried amid sand and clay. Until a few years ago, such projects -- called "oil sands" or "tar sands" -- sputtered at the fringes of the oil industry. But since technological breakthroughs brought down costs and oil prices have soared, companies have been investing heavily here. Oil-sands production is now profitable when a barrel of oil sells in the low $20s, analysts said -- far below the recent $50 range.

Factoring in the oil sands, Canada s proven oil reserves are reported to be nearly 180 billion barrels, second only to Saudi Arabia. U.S. energy officials say Canada s oil-sands deposits are among the largest in the world. The oil sands are buried under an area about the size of New York State. Fort McMurray, the hub of oil-sands activity, boasts on billboards: "We have the energy." The oil sands are bringing riches to the province and creating thousands of high-paying jobs.

Companies here are producing increasing amounts of oil from this unconventional source -- about 1 million barrels a day. If all of that oil went to the United States, it would amount to roughly 5 percent of daily consumption. In 1995, oil derived from the sands was less than half the current amount. Alberta officials expect production to triple from today s level by 2020.

Canada was the top supplier of crude oil to the United States last year, providing about 16 percent of U.S. imports. Crude produced from the oil sands is making up a larger portion of what Canada sends to the United States. Even so, development of the oil sands is not happening fast enough to significantly reduce U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., the Royal Dutch/Shell Group and ConocoPhillips Co. have oil-sands projects here. China s oil companies, eager to gain access to supplies to satisfy the country s growing energy needs, are buying into oil-sands projects and would like to import some of the oil.

Though profitability has improved, making oil out of the oil sands can be less lucrative than traditional oil development. Oil-sands production also requires spending money in different ways. With normal oil production, companies have to invest heavily in exploration and sometimes drill wells that come up dry. With oil sands, companies spend very little on exploration -- the soil here is loaded with bitumen -- but must devote large amounts of money to remove the deposits from the ground and change it into crude oil.

The pickup in production transformed Fort McMurray from a remote hamlet to a thriving city with more than 55,000 residents. The demand for skilled workers is so high that some companies are importing them from as far away as South Africa.

Some companies would like to invest more but are constrained by a tight labour market, logistical complications and sophisticated machinery that takes years to build. Companies are lobbying for improved roads, affordable housing and other government services they say are needed to support expansion.

"The industry is growing as fast as it can," said James E. Carter, president of Syncrude Canada Ltd., which started producing from the oil sands here in 1978.

On a recent day at Syncrude, the giant trucks rumbled through pits, the earth heaving from their weight. Fully loaded, some of the trucks weigh more than two Boeing 747 airplanes. "It feels like you re driving a boat," said Lisa Goldie, who sat in the driver s seat of a truck, punching information into computer displays on the dashboard. Smaller vehicles fly bright orange flags above them so the huge trucks don t run them over. The trucks haul away the top layers of dirt, exposing the espresso-coloured oil sands. The sands are then collected and sent to processing facilities that separate the bitumen. It typically takes two tons of oil sands to produce one barrel of crude, which is 42 gallons. The companies move about 1 million tons of earth a day.

The companies say they plan to eventually fill all the pits and are planting trees. But they say the waste ponds -- filled with water, sand and petroleum by-products -- will take years to settle. Officials of the government agency Environment Canada said in a recent interview that in the past five years, they have taken 21 enforcement actions against oil-sands companies for such violations as releasing prohibited contaminants into the air and water. It is said the scale of the projects is unprecedented and they do not fully know what the environmental impact will be. "Nothing has been done on his scale before," said Robert Moyles, an agency spokesman. "The record to date is that it is being done in an environmentally responsible way."

Environmentalists complain that the mining pollutes the air and water and that companies huge amounts of clean-burning natural gas are used in the process of converting the oil sands into crude. Natural gas is in short supply in the United States, where prices have risen in recent years.

FIRST "AMERICA" MAP SELLS FOR HALF A MILLION

LONDON (Reuters)

A 500-year-old map which was the first to use the word "America" and the first to portray the earth as a globe sold for 545,600 pounds in London on Wednesday.

Auction house Christie s said the 1507 Martin Waldseemuller map was also the first to distinguish north and South America and the first to depict the Pacific Ocean.

One of four known examples, the map was discovered by a European man who went through his collection of old maps after reading about the subject in a newspaper.

The sale estimate had been 500,000 to 800,000 pounds.

A much bigger version of the map produced in 1515 and often referred to as "America s birth certificate" was bought by the U.S. Library of Congress in Washington DC for $10 million in 2003.

Experts view the Waldseemuller map as groundbreaking because before its publication the view of the world was dominated by the beliefs of the Ancient Greeks.

It was created by scholars, led by Waldseemuller, after they were given a French translation in 1505 of the voyages of Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci.

His accounts gave enough detail to allow the scholars to plot a new map to include the New World to the West.

They called the landmass "America" after Vespucci.