The LID is responsible for overseeing duties of the Columbia County surveyor. One of the primary goals of the County Surveyor is to establish and maintain survey markers and existing National Geodetic and U.S. Geological Survey markers. The Columbia County Surveyor employs global positioning system technologies to accomplish this goal in a way that not only keeps costs at a minimum but also will provide an easy and inexpensive way for future corner replacement. In addition, corner points collected using GPS methods can be directly imported into and used in the county’s GIS.
Columbia County LID is currently in the process of organizing its GPS collected corners to create a highly accurate field collected and verified public land survey system that would replace the presently used 1:24,000-scale system. By using survey quality data as a base, the tax parcel mapping efforts already underway in Columbia County can be referenced to a higher accuracy frame work that will not only improve upon the data quality, but will make the resolution of legal description problems more easily accomplished.
Currently the LID is working from west to east across the county gathering about 5% of total corner points in the county per year.