Land and Water Law: Ownership and Access
DISCLAIMER
Before purchasing, review the rules of your licensing or certifying entity. It is your responsibility to confirm this course meets your CE requirements. See the credit tab on the course page for details.
What’s Included: Full webinar recording, written course materials, expert instruction, a mandatory quiz, and a certificate upon completion.
Deliverability Timeline: All courses are generally available within 1-2 weeks after the live presentation.
CE Credits: AIA and/or LA/CES accreditation is available by request for courses recorded prior to March 11, 2026. All courses after that date include those accreditations by default, if applicable. With these accreditations, our courses qualify for credit in nearly all states for engineers, surveyors, architects, and landscape architects.
Learn more about the on-demand format in our FAQ or contact us at (715) 835-5900 or customerservice@halfmoonseminars.org
Agenda
Registration: 8:00 – 8:30 am
Morning Session: 8:30 – 11:45 am
Lunch (On your own): 11:45 am – 12:45 pm
Afternoon Session: 12:45 – 4:30 pm
Understanding Risk In Land Transactions
Main categories of risk in land transactions
• Land title risk
• Boundary survey risk
• Land use planning risks
How to identify risks
• Review of records
• Physical site inspection
• Field survey
Common problem areas
• Encroachments
• Unauthorized access
• Invisible easements
• Natural monuments
• Poor quality surveys
• Building set-backs
• Other regulatory boundaries
How to quantify risk
• Evaluating your grant deed
• Evaluating your latest survey
• Evaluating property corner history
• Evaluating chain-of-survey
• Evaluating chain-of-title
• The role of an ALTA/ACSM Land Title Survey
• Obtaining a new survey
Communicating land transaction risks
Reducing Risk In Land Transactions
Reducing land title risk
The surveyors role in preparing/evaluating chain-of-title
The surveyors role in evaluating a land title report
The surveyors role in the writing/interpreting the your description
Dealing with encroachments
Reducing boundary survey risk
Boundary line agreements and lot line adjustments
The land surveyor’s role in quiet title actions
Replacement of missing monuments
Marking your parcel boundaries
Locating natural monuments
Locating easements
Reducing land use planning risk
Getting clarification from your local agency
Constraining your site design
The Land Surveyor’s Role in Water Boundaries and Riparian Rights
Understanding water marks
• Which water mark?
• What water mark?
• Before man-made changes?
Understanding meander lines and meander line surveys
What does navigable really mean?
• Tidally-influenced
• Support of commerce
• Navigable in fact/navigable in law
Different types of water boundaries
• Fee title
• Public trust easements
• Regulatory boundaries
• Tidelands are special
• Water boundaries and vertical datums
Riparian water rights and severance
Correcting Land Descriptions
Should it be done?
The wrong way to do it
The right way to do it
Referencing survey maps in your land descriptions
Types of Easements
Easement creation and maintenance
• Dedicating/creating easements by map
• Creating easements by separate instrument
• Defining easement terms of use
• Addressing maintenance obligations –
in easement deeds, other agreements (RMAS), default statutory provisions
Terminating easements, disputes re: easement usage, etc.
Obstructing easements
Utility rights-of-way
Current issues involving utility and other easements
Brief summary of water rights in California
• Riparian versus appropriative rights
• Basics of pre-1914 appropriative rights
• Documenting pre-1914 appropriative rights
• Understanding and documenting beneficial use
• State’s new groundwater regulatory regime
• Role of state/local agencies
• Handling water rights in purchase/sale agreements
Understanding riparian rights, access to surface water, etc.
Credits
California Attorneys
6.5 CLE Hours
California Engineers,
Land Surveyors, Geologists
Non-Credit Continuing Ed.
Title Insurance Producers
Non-Credit Continuing Ed.
Continuing Education Credit Information
This seminar is open to the public and offers 6.5 CLE hours to California attorneys. HalfMoon Education is an approved CLE provider in California (Provider No. 8370).
This course offers 6.5 hours of non-credit continuing education to California professional engineers, land surveyors, and geologists. It may qualify for mandated continuing education credit in other states. Refer to specific state rules to determine eligibility.
This event also offers a non-credit continuing education opportunity to California title insurance producers.
Attendance will be monitored and reported, as required. Attendance certificates will be available after the seminar for most individuals who complete the entire event. Attendance certificates not available at the seminar will be mailed to participants within fifteen business days.
Speakers
Landon Blake
Mapping Department Manager, Hawkins and Associates Engineering, Inc.Mr. Blake has practiced land surveying throughout central California and western Nevada. He is licensed in both states and is also a certified federal surveyor. He specializes in surveys to support large public works infrastructure projects. He also serves as an expert witness in disputes involving boundary survey or land title issues. He currently works as the Mapping Department manager for Hawkins and Associates in Modesto, California. In his previous positions he worked as the Mapping Department manager for O’Dell Engineering and the assistant surveyor manager for KSN in Stockton, California. Mr. Blake serves as a volunteer on the Land Surveyor Technical Advisory Committee to the California Board for Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors and Geologists. He is currently the president of the California Land Surveyors Association Central Valley Chapter and the vice president of the American Council of Engineering Companies Central California Chapter. Mr. Blake teaches at surveying and GIS events around the Western United States.
Daniel Muller
Gagen McCoyPartner with Gagen McCoyMr. Muller’s clients include property and business owners, homebuilders, developers, public agencies, and individuals. He has over 20 years’ experience resolving – and litigating, if necessary – a wide array of property and business-related disputes, including matters involving land use, eminent domain/direct condemnation, inverse condemnation (unconstitutional regulatory and physical “takings”), development impact fees and exactions, redevelopment, purchases/sales, easements and boundaries, other municipal/constitutional law issues, as well as probate, will contests, and estate planning disputes. In an era when few cases go to trial, and litigators with trial experience are rare, Mr. Muller’s experience is unusual – and valuable, in allowing him to effectively counsel clients and win in court. Early in his career, he sought increasing litigation responsibility and was given the opportunity to handle dozens of cases from the early pleading and discovery stages, through successful jury and bench trial verdicts.