The Commissioner of Conservation and Natural Resources, acting by and through the chief of the division of land surveys, is hereby vested with the following functions, duties, and responsibilities:
(1) To restore, maintain and preserve the land survey monuments, section corners, and quarter section corners established by the United States public land survey within Alabama, together with all pertinent field notes, plats, and documents; and also to restore, establish, maintain, and preserve other boundary markers considered by the division to be of importance or otherwise established by law;
(2) To design and cause to be placed at established public land survey corner sites, where practical, substantial monuments permanently indicating, with words and figures, the exact location involved. If such monuments cannot be placed at the exact corner point, then witness corners of similar design shall be placed as near as possible, with words and figures indicating the bearing and distance to the true corner;
(3) To establish, maintain, and provide safe storage facilities for a comprehensive system of recordation of information respecting all monuments established by the United States public land survey within this state and such records as may be pertinent to the division's establishment or maintenance of other land corners, Alabama coordinate system stations and accessories, and monuments in general;
(4) To extend throughout this state a triangulation and leveling net of precision whereby the Alabama state coordinate system, already initiated within this state by the United States coast and geodetic survey, may be made to cover to the necessary extent those areas of the state which do not now have enough geodetic control stations to permit the general use of the system by land surveyors and others;
(5) To collect and preserve information obtained from surveys made by those authorized to establish land monuments or land boundaries and to assist in the proper recording of the same by the duly constituted county officials, or otherwise;
(6) To furnish, upon reasonable request and tender of the required fees therefor, certified copies of records created or maintained by the division. When certified by the chief of the division of land surveys or a designated assistant, the records shall be admissible in evidence in any court in this state as the original record; and
(7) To prescribe and disseminate to those engaged in the business of land surveying, regulations designed to establish uniform professional surveying and mapping methods and standards in this state.
Last modified: May 3, 2021