Private Drain Mapping

The Hancock County Surveyors office is offering to map private tiles for farmers in Hancock County.  The initial roll out will not be public facing on beacon.  However, the county will provide maps to contributing farmers showing private tile locations and county regulated drains on property they own or farm.

If you would like to participate, then we'd prefer GPS coordinates of tile locations if they're available.  Having GPS coordinates for terminal ends and turns would be best, ideally in some kind of spreadsheet or CSV table; though we can probably take whatever you give us and make it work.  It would be useful if you already know the tile material and size, and we can represent that graphically on maps catered specifically for you.

We can potentially use hand drawn maps but they're less accurate.  We need at least three known points so we can use a process called rubber-sheeting.  The points need to be something we can see on an aerial photo like outfalls and inlets.  We can even use corners of buildings, trees, and fence posts but we need to have an idea of what the offset to the tile is.  For example, "20' southeast of the corner of the barn."

Depending on farmer responses we may modify the program.  In the future, the Surveyor's office could potentially create a mobile application to simplify the capture of tile locations.  If there are a lot of participants, questions, or concerns then we may call a public meeting to discuss the future direction of the program.

Once information is provided to the Surveyor's office, it's public record.  You can change your mind at any time.  Contributors aren't required to provide any additional information, but we won't delete what you've already provided.

Please note - In cases where we've taken GPS coordinates of the location of regulated drains, what's showing on beacon is an accurate location.  However, in some cases, regulated tile displaying on beacon could be drawn based on a legal description from the 1800's.  Consequently, the location on beacon may not be indicative of the true location of a regulated drain.  Take what you see with a grain of salt.

If you would like the Surveyor's office to probe and GPS a disputed location of a Regulated Drain Tile, please let us know and we will put you on the schedule to get this completed.

Please contact the office with any questions or concerns (317-477-1150, hcan@hancockin.gov (drainage questions), john.milburn@hancockin.gov or nate.murray@hancockin.gov (mapping questions).