Land Surveying in Johns Creek, GA

Johns Creek, the Chattahoochee and the River Corridor

Johns Creek was incorporated in 2006 and takes in 30.8 square miles, all of it Fulton County. The Forsyth County line runs along its northeast side, the Gwinnett County line along its east-southeast side, and the Chattahoochee River lies inside the city limits rather than beside them. All three of those change what a survey has to account for.

Deeds and plats for Johns Creek property are filed with the Fulton County Clerk of Superior and Magistrate Courts Real Estate Division, in the Deeds and Records Room on the ground floor of the Lewis R. Slaton Courthouse at 136 Pryor Street SW, south-southwest of the city in downtown Atlanta. Parcel and assessment data is published separately by the Fulton County Board of Assessors through qPublic. Johns Creek also keeps two of its own tools that are worth opening early: CreekView, an interactive property information map, and a plat lookup, both linked from the Community Development page at 11360 Lakefield Drive.

Local review runs through the Community Development Department's Land Development Division, which reviews land disturbance permits, construction drawings, final plats, hydrology plans and reports, and storm system as-builts. That review looks at site layout, the erosion and sedimentation control plan, stormwater management design, environmental and tree protection, landscaping, and conformance with the Georgia Plat Act. A pre-application meeting is required before a land disturbance permit application goes in, and those meetings are held on Thursdays. Permits split into a minor land disturbance permit, generally for under an acre of disturbance, and a full land disturbance permit for an acre or more. An application is not in the queue until the Development Services Manager confirms it is complete.

The river is the part outside firms miss. Under the Metropolitan River Protection Act, adopted by the Georgia General Assembly in 1973 and codified at O.C.G.A. 12-5-440 and following, land within 2,000 feet of both banks of the Chattahoochee falls in a protected corridor administered by the Atlanta Regional Commission. Land-disturbing activity in that corridor has to be reviewed, approved and certified as consistent with the adopted Chattahoochee Corridor Plan. The plan sorts every parcel in the corridor into one of six vulnerability categories, each with its own ceiling on how much of the land may be disturbed and how much may be made impervious. The certificate application is filed with the city, and the city forwards it to the Atlanta Regional Commission.

That is survey work before it is anything else. Somebody has to show where the 2,000 foot corridor line falls on the parcel, where the 50 foot undisturbed buffer sits back from the riverbank, where the 150 foot impervious surface setback lands, and how much land disturbance and impervious area already exists, because a review is triggered when a proposal increases either one beyond what was approved before.

Away from the river, Johns Creek is a subdivided residential city with named streams cutting through it: Johns Creek itself, Cauley Creek, Long Indian Creek and Caney Creek, each carrying a state stream buffer. Typical jobs are a boundary retracement before a fence, addition or pool, building corner and setback staking on infill lots, a foundation survey and an as-built for the lender, and an elevation certificate where the mapping calls for one.

S&S Land Surveying works from 549 West Ave in Cedartown. William "Bart" Sims is the licensed Georgia land surveyor whose seal goes on the finished drawing. The firm's license covers Georgia and nothing beyond it.