What is a utility easement?
A utility easement is a right a utility or locality holds to keep lines, pipes, poles or other facilities on land it does not own. In Virginia one comes from a recorded grant, an approved and recorded subdivision plat, or, for electric distribution and communications easements under Va. Code 55.1-306.1, 20 continuous years of presence with no suit by a title holder seeking removal or reformation.
A line of poles across a pasture, and three records that could explain it
A row of poles crosses the back pasture, or a water line runs under the front of a lot. It is plainly there. The useful question is which record put it there, because each kind of record carries a different reach.
A recorded grant
An owner signed and recorded an instrument granting the easement. Where a grant recorded on or after July 1, 2006 also binds the land to provide future utility easements, or to relocate, build or maintain utility facilities, or to pay for that work, the covenant runs with the land to later owners for the utility's benefit.A recorded subdivision plat
Recording an approved subdivision plat transfers to the locality, or an association or authority it names, the easements shown for stormwater, domestic water and sewage as the locality requires. Every subdivision ordinance must also provide for conveying shared easements to cable operators and to public service corporations furnishing cable, gas, telephone and electric service.Twenty years in place
For the purposes of Va. Code 55.1-306.1, which covers electric distribution and communications easements, a utility's or provider's easement is deemed to exist, with no requirement of adverse possession, claim of right or exclusivity, once evidence shows it has been on the land continuously for 20 years or more with no intervening lawsuit by a title holder seeking removal or reformation.The plat is not always the whole story. VDOT's survey guidance warns that many developers grant utility providers easements after a subdivision plat is recorded, and that those later grants may not be limited to the platted easement strips and may add their own terms. Which kind of plat sits in a file, and what each kind shows, is explained in what a plat is.
The third record is not the ordinary test for a neighbor's road. A neighbor claiming a road by long use meets a different, common-law test, set out in what a prescriptive easement is. On a land boundary survey, the plat has to show items crossing the property lines, including evidence of easements such as utilities.
A right to keep facilities on land the holder does not own
With the three records in view, the definition is short. An easement is a privilege to use another's land in a particular manner and for a particular purpose, not an ownership interest in that land. A utility easement is that privilege held for lines, pipes and the equipment that goes with them.
Virginia's utility easement statute, Va. Code 55.1-306, defines utility services broadly: products, services and equipment related to energy, broadband and other communications, water and sewerage. The landowner keeps the land. The utility holds the right to have its facilities there, on whatever terms the grant, the plat or the statute gives it.
What a particular easement lets a utility do, including clearing and trimming along the line, is a question for its recorded instrument, read with the utility, and by an attorney when the terms matter to a sale. Which utility serves a parcel, and how a new line gets extended to it, is covered in how to get power to raw land. Whether a public water or sewer line in the road actually serves a lot is a separate question, taken up in what public water and sewer available means.
Utilities are not the only outsiders with a lawful reason to cross rural land. An owner of land with graves on it owes access to the family members and others that a separate statute names, covered in selling land with a family cemetery. A conservation easement is a different instrument again, defined in the conservation easement glossary entry.
The court relocation route stops at a public utility easement
An owner who wants a line moved off a future house site meets the first limit here.
Va. Code 55.1-304, amended in 2026, lets the owner of the burdened land petition the circuit court to relocate or modify an easement when the holder will not agree, and it reaches easements created by grant, reservation, prescription, implication, necessity, estoppel or other method. The same section says that court route may not be used for a public service corporation easement or facility, a public utility easement or facility, whether publicly or privately owned, a telecommunications easement, a conservation or open-space easement or an easement appurtenant to a conservation easement, an easement held by a public entity, or any easement where the new location would interfere with those.
What remains open is agreement. Under the same section any easement may be relocated or modified by recording, in the circuit court clerk's office where it lies, a written agreement carrying the easement holder's consent and any other required consents and setting out the new location. How a court petition works for a private easement, and what a judge weighs, is in easements explained.
No excavation starts until a locate request is in
A buried line leaves little on the surface, and a recorded easement does not mark the ground. Virginia puts the duty on whoever digs.
No person shall make or begin any excavation or demolition without first submitting a locate request to the notification center.
Va. Code 56-265.17
Submitting the request is not the end of it. Under Va. Code 56-265.24 no excavator may begin excavation or demolition before reviewing and heeding the positive response marking status of the area.
A power line, pipe or cable easement crossing your land?
Send the tax map number and what crosses the ground, and Lowell will look for the recorded grant or plat behind it before a building site or a price depends on it. No cost, no obligation.
Got it. Thank you.
We'll be in touch shortly with an honest read.
Questions this raises
Is a utility confined to the easement strip drawn on a subdivision plat?
Not necessarily. VDOT's survey guidance warns that many developers grant utility providers easements after the subdivision plat is recorded, and that those later grants may not be limited to the bounds of the platted easements and may contain additional terms. A title search that stops at the plat can miss them. An attorney reads the later recorded grants alongside the plat.
How wide is an easement deemed to exist under the twenty-year utility rule?
For the purposes of Va. Code 55.1-306.1, an easement deemed to exist after 20 or more years of continuous presence, with no intervening litigation by a title holder seeking removal or reformation, is deemed to be the greater of the actual occupancy in the utility's usual course of business or 7.5 feet on each side of the installed facilities' centerline. The width of a recorded easement is read from its own instrument or plat.
Does a new owner inherit a promise to grant utility easements in the future?
It can. Where an easement granted by an instrument recorded on or after July 1, 2006 binds the land to provide a future utility easement, to relocate, build or maintain utility facilities, or to pay for that work, Va. Code 55.1-306 says the covenant runs with the land, its successors and assigns, for the benefit of the utility. An attorney reads the instrument for its terms.
Where this page's facts come from
Every rule, office and figure above traces to one of these. Rules change; check the office before you act on one.
- Va. Code 55.1-306 and 55.1-306.1, utility easements (Title 55.1, Chapter 3, Article 1) Virginia General Assembly
- Va. Code 55.1-304, relocation or modification of easement Virginia General Assembly
- Va. Code 15.2-2265, recordation of an approved plat Virginia General Assembly
- Va. Code 15.2-2241, mandatory provisions of a subdivision ordinance Virginia General Assembly
- Va. Code 56-265.17, locate request before excavation Virginia General Assembly
- Va. Code 56-265.24, positive response marking status Virginia General Assembly
- 18VAC10-20-370, land boundary surveys Virginia Administrative Code
- City of Norfolk v. Pretty Lake 5757 LLC (not designated for publication) Court of Appeals of Virginia
- VDOT Survey Manual, Chapter 4 Virginia Department of Transportation