WHAT WE
DO
Lake
Country Land Professionals provides land surveying services
to property owners, developers and contractors in the
greater Rice County area of southcentral Minnesota. Our
work also takes us to Scott, LeSueur, Dodge, Dakota,
Steele, Waseca and Blue Earth counties.
BOUNDARY SURVEYS -- We measure and
delineate property lines, establishing the boundaries of a
parcel of land using its legal description. This involves
setting iron pipes with plastic Registered Land Surveyor
(RLS) caps or verifying existing monuments (markers) at
property corners. Often these are in the form of iron
rods, axels, pipes, cast iron or concrete monuments. In
the past, wooden posts, blazes in trees, piled stone
corners or other types of monuments have also been used
to mark original government corners. A certificate of
survey is then drafted from the data we collect in the
field to provide a representation of the parcel
surveyed.
TOPOGRAPHIC SURVEYS -- We map the location
physical features, trees and other natural features, as
well as structures. (This is known as the horizontal and
vertical aspects of a property).
CONSTRUCTION SURVEYING -- We survey
existing conditions of the work site, including topography,
existing buildings and underground infrastructure and
utilities whenever necessary (for example, measuring invert
elevations and diameters of sewers at manholes). We stake
out building corners and grid lines that will guide
construction of new structures, primarily roads and
buildings. We also verify the location of structures during
construction, and conduct “as-built” surveys to verify the
location of any physical changes.
PLATTING -- We map the official
subdividing of land into parcels and record it as a
subdivision or plat.
DESCRIPTIONS -- We create property
descriptions, providing a record of the exact location of
the parcel for the purposes of easements, mortgages or
transfers.
FLOOD INSURANCE LETTER OF MAP AMENDMENTS
(“LOMA”) -- We prepare Elevation Certificates for
property owners applying to the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to have specific
property removed from the “100-year” floodplain maps.
FEMA, in administering the National Flood Insurance Program
in the early 1970s, published maps showing the areas of a
community that are subject to flooding. The maps designate
Special Flood Hazard Areas -- commonly known as the
“100-year” floodplain, where there is a 1 percent or
greater chance of flooding in any given year. Properties
within a map’s floodplain are required to carry flood
insurance.
Recognizing that some areas may have been inadvertently
included in the floodplain, or that changes may be made to
raise an area above the floodplain, FEMA has a process in
place that allows a property or structure to be removed
from the floodplain map. The process is known as the
“Letter of Map Amendment,” or LOMA. In most cases,
applicants need to contact a licensed land surveyor or
engineer to prepare an Elevation Certificate for the
property as part of the LOMA request.
Local property owners are advised to consult a licensed
land surveyor or engineer when preparing a LOMA request. We
know of an instance in Faribault where adjoining and near
identical properties were referred to different national
clearing house firms to determine the need for flood
insurance or a LOMA. In this case one clearing house placed
a property in the flood plain and the other did not. Only a
licensed surveyor such as Lake Country Land Professionals
really knows Rice County and is prepared to determine
accurate elevations.