Records of Survey - Interpreting the Intent - 1997

Prior to the 1985 Records of Survey legislation that became AS 34.65.030, the Recorder's Office did not have a category available for the filing of surveys that were not specifically a subdivision, a cadastral survey,  or a boundary survey. Surveyors also had a tendency to restrict access to their survey data for proprietary reasons.  The result was that one could find a lot of survey monuments, some marked and some unmarked, that were not referenced on any plat or in any record document.  Many boundary surveying texts suggest that such monuments should be given little if any weight.

The ROS legislation was modeled after California statutes.  AS 34.65.030 mandates, "...a land surveyor shall record...a record of the survey", if the survey discloses material evidence or physical change that does not appear on a previous plat of record or indicates alternate positions from those of record.  My intent in taking this poll and presenting the paper was to determine whether most of the surveyors were interpreting and applying the law in a similar manner.  I found that often, they were not.  And as there is no penalty associated with violating the law, it was up to the individual surveyor to apply as they saw fit.