With pipelines and power lines, you usually keep ownership of the land but grant a permanent easement. The words in that easement can matter as much as the price.
Terms that affect you for decades
- Width: the permanent strip and any temporary construction area.
- Purpose: one line or pipe, or the right to add more later?
- Depth of cover for pipelines, and tower placement for power lines.
- Access: which roads and gates they can use, and how they notify you.
- Restoration: topsoil, fences, terraces, drainage, and who pays for damage.
- Your uses: crossings, roads, fences, ponds and future development across the easement.
- Abandonment: what happens if the line is no longer used.
Price is more than the strip
Compensation can include the value of the easement itself and any loss in value to the rest of your property, for example when a large power line affects how buyers view the whole tract.
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General information, not legal advice. Attorney advertising. Responsible attorney: Erick Holguin, Perez Law Firm, PLLC, McAllen, Texas.