Oil leases put spotlight on faulty surveys

McCOOK, Nebraska -- In an ideal world, counties are divided into townships and townships are divided into 36 "nice, pretty squares."

However, Red Willow County, Nebraska, commissioners learned Monday morning, that something happened many years ago in the northwest corner of Red Willow County -- and the sections in Township 4, Range 30 W are not 36 "nice, pretty squares."

The map's been messed up -- and not corrected -- since before someone started noticing disparities in the very early 1920s. In 1921, a map was made, and roads, fences and crop lines were not located on quarter-section and section lines.

County commissioner Vesta Dack, who with her husband, Dean, owns pastureland in the township, guessed the roads may have been an original land owner's -- and "Mr. Hill," Vesta thinks -- "shortcuts to wherever," roads from here to there, nothing that followed legal section lines. "His roads became the 'section lines'," Vesta said, and subsequent land buyers measured their land off these roads, so the inconsistencies continued.

A map made in 1962, when the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation was surveying for Hugh Butler Lake and its associated land (whose southern border is in Township 4), is a retracement of the 1921 map, County Surveyor Gary Dicenta said, so nothing was corrected even then.

When, in 2005, the county implemented GIS -- Geographic Information System -- mapping so that the county assessor could more closely determine land use, field size and land taxes, the company developing the digital maps appeared to follow existing roads (using aerial maps) as section lines. So, no corrections were made then.

However, seven or eight years ago, when the Dacks purchased their pasture, they discovered inconsistencies, paid for surveys of their own land and made necessary corrections to their own deed.

County Assessor Sandra Kotschwar said she wants other landowners to know that their deeds "may not be accurate. That they may not reflect the land they're occupying ... that they may not even be in the same section."

She explained that she wants to compare the homeowners' deeds and "what we're taxing them for. They may need new deeds."

Now that oil company representatives want to lease land upon which to explore/drill for oil, discrepancies from the past are becoming even more critical. Kotschwar has been working with one oilfield executive, she said, who is concerned that he may not drill on the proper landowner's property.

Dicenta emphasized that a landowner probably is not going to lose land, or gain land.

"It's messy. That whole area is out of whack," Vesta said. "It needs to be cleaned up. It's been like this for a hundred years."

But, Dicenta said, "This is not a small correction. We're dealing with at least 14 sections." And, he estimated, 20 to 30 landowners.

And the problem will rear its head every time the land passes to a new owner or an heir, Vesta said.

The lines need to be resurveyed to write corrected deeds, Dicenta and commissioner Earl McNutt agreed. But, therein lies the stickler. Who's going to pay to have this corrected?

Vesta said she feels that landowners should be anxious to get corrected deeds. "It's a landowner's responsibility to protect their property," she said.

Kotschwar said she has made no changes yet, and that she will start by asking GIS to start making corrections, using an aerial map that Dicenta gave to her on Feb. 20, a map marked with the surveyed section lines.

"It's better to clear it up now, rather than in court," she said.