Judge orders Harrisburg to dismantle well
City drilled well on wrong side of a property line in 1996
Thursday, June 19, 2008 12:36 PM PDT
ALBANY (AP) — The city of Harrisburg must dismantle a well it erroneously drilled on the wrong side of a property line in 1996, a Linn County judge has ruled.
The well is the city’s most prolific source of drinking water, producing up to 400 gallons per minute.
Harrisburg sought ownership under Oregon’s ‘‘adverse claims’’ law. That statute allows a party to take possession of property it has openly and continuously used for at least 10 years if it can demonstrate an ‘‘honest belief’’ that it owned the land in the first place.
But Judge John McCormick rejected the city’s claim Wednesday and instructed the two sides to figure out a timeline for the well’s removal.
The land, which sits along the banks of the Willamette River, is owned by Ellen Leigh of Battleground, Wash.
Her attorney, Joseph Nash, argued that Harrisburg failed the ‘‘honest belief’’ standard. He cited city documents showing that Harrisburg officials back in 1996 had questioned whether the well had been sunk on someone else’s land.
Former City Engineer Ray Walters testified Wednesday that he had been in the process of retiring during the 1996 well project, and had asked a survey crew to verify the site. He never saw a report from them, however, and assumed the documents had been filed with the city.
‘‘I should have probably gone after them, but I never did,’’ he said.
Former City Administrator Danny Eckles, now retired, testified about a letter he sent to the project’s contract engineer in August 1996, asking him to verify that the well had actually been drilled on a city-owned lot.
Eckles said he wrote the letter after members of the city’s public works committee raised concerns about the well’s location. The project engineer’s 1996 response said the well’s location had been confusing and Walters was supposed to survey the site.
A real estate agent noticed the error more than a year ago. The city later offered Leigh $10,000 for the 0.4-acre, landlocked site.
Instead, Leigh proposed a $200 per month lease agreement, retroactive to 1996. The city rejected that deal, which would have cost more than $20,000 in back rent.
The Linn County assessor’s office lists the real market value of the entire parcel as $500.
