Tri-State G&T Digitally Transforms Easement Research with GIS

Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, Inc., is a cooperative power supplier operating on a not-for-profit basis. Its mission is to provide member electric cooperative systems with a reliable, affordable, and responsible electricity supply in accordance with cooperative principles. Tri-State has member distribution electric cooperatives from the Eastern Plains through the Rocky Mountains and down to the southern deserts to provide power across nearly 200,000 square miles. 

Transmission right-of-way land ownership often consists of a tapestry of different easements and licenses granted to Tri-State by the landowners. Whenever Tri-State staff must perform work on the right of way, they must know the easement details and often contact the owners of the impacted parcels of land. Given over 5,000 miles of transmission lines, finding the exact parcel has been challenging, particularly if Tri-State’s land agent must speak directly to the landowner.

The land agent must determine the correct transmission line, visit the drawing controls department, examine the plan and profile alignment sheets, and determine how many miles the parcel is from the starting substation to the structure where the work or information is needed. Next, the land agent would need to visit the document room to search for the easement records. The agent would often have to travel to the field to walk the line to search for the correct easement. The final step was to contact the county assessor to see if the land had changed hands since the original easement was recorded. This process, which involved paper forms, took several weeks and dozens of hours of labor. Errors were also common due to manual searches, handoffs, and field investigations. If these errors were discovered, the process would then have to be repeated. “Our land agents could spend up to several weeks to get a simple answer to the question—what rights do we have, or restrictions exist on a segment of our transmission right of way,” said Kathryn Selland, M.S., GIS Analyst III at Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, Inc. “It was very frustrating.” 

Fortunately, Tri-State already had ArcGIS Enterprise for its transmission line data. It also had a number of CAD drawings of the easement parcels and easement information in its document management system. The GIS team built its GeoPortal using Portal for ArcGIS, front-ended with Esri partner software Geocortex from Latitude Geographics. The GeoPortal allowed users to query the transmission line data about structures and rights of way.

The GeoPortal is heavily used for inspections and project planning. However, it was not used for easement management. After a visit to the Esri User Conference, the GIS team concluded they could leverage their GIS capability with some relatively simple configuration, easement polygon data migration, and integration with their existing document management system. The GIS team migrated their easement polygons into their GIS and linked them to the document management system. The document management system contained the legal descriptions, including rights and descriptions. A simple addition of the easement document ID to the GIS polygons, in effect, created a one-stop shop for easement research.
 

Tri-State’s prior manual process was completely transformed. Instead of the arduous, manual, and paper-based system, when a field request for work was made, the land agent could click on the easement polygon and within a few seconds, capture the legal description and provide the rights to the requester. The time for research was reduced from several weeks to minutes. Instead of the information held closely to just a few employees, the GIS provides greater transparency of what rights were granted to Tri-State. This solution made self-service the standard for many additional employees who needed to utilize GIS technology, from land agents to engineers, operators, and designers.

The labor cost for the easement research was drastically reduced. Critical land use restrictions were highlighted in color. For example, one restriction limited access to certain parcels during hunting season. Being unaware of this restriction could create a serious safety issue. Advanced knowledge of vegetated wetlands, delicate habitats, and culturally sensitive areas alerts employees before accessing the parcels.

Missing or miscoded easements were uncovered and corrected. Not having a clear delineation of rights could stop planned work. The new system helped reduce risk by avoiding errors, which could result in issues should a violation of owners’ rights occur.

“The GeoPortal for easement research kicked off all kinds of new applications,” said Rich Garcia, Geospatial Data Systems Manager at Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, Inc. “It provided a foundation for analytics for many of our land management activities that had been manual and in need of transformation.” 

Plans are in place to allow access to the system for Tri-State’s mobile users using ArcGIS Field Maps. The underlying technology, data migration, and integration with the document management system are already in place. The plan is to build environmental siting and permitting dashboards. One of the most critical issues with right-of-way management is the location of Indigenous peoples’ sacred lands. Work is underway to capture this data and include it in the GeoPortal.

Also underway is developing a series of dashboards that track the progress of easement research, cultural assessments, restrictions identification, and color coding.