Name:   Lifer - Subject:   Legal Right to 90 Feet Into the Lake? Date:   5/14/2018 8:19:11 PM

50ft is the maximum length for a pier but in many places you won't get a permit for anywhere near that. It depends on the width of of the lake where it is to be placed. The  typical formula is 1/3, 1/3, and 1/3 in narrow sloughs, meaning you can use your 1/3, the folks on the other side can use 1/3 and the middle third remains open for navigation.

For your question Otter, I do not believe that APCO flooded any land they did not have clear tittle too without restrictions. If they couldn't come to terms on price they used the condemnation process to aquire it at fair market value. Very few land owners when Martin was impounded fought to keep any land. In fact just the opposite. Most would only sell if APCO bought all of their land. APCO only wanted to buy to the 491 mark but agreed to purchase all of the tracts that included what would become waterfront. That is why APCO ended up. With so much of the land around the lake.

I am not a lawyer but have read several books on the early days of APCO and the building and flooding of the impoundment. When this lake was built the surrounding land was considered useless and nobody wanted it for several reasons. First and foremost was the recent to the time building of the Panama Canal and the resulting diseases, especially malaria. Also the original charter called for the lake to be drawn down 50ft each year. This resulted in large swaths of mud for a good portion of the year so nobody wanted to live here. It stayed at 50ft for a couple of decades then went to 30ft, then 10ft,and now 7ft.The current 10ft set back from 491 is a late 20th century iteration so it has no bearing on nearly deeds at all. We're their a few folks that held onto their future waterfront? I'm sure there must have been but I doubt they were granted any special deed concessions but if they were and the deed was subsequently transferred without those concessions they were gone forever

I write all this with nothing but general knowledge as a basis and I could be wrong and would be very interested to know one way or the other. You need to hire a disinterested title abstracter to do a full search on your property. It sounds like a typical 30 year search probably won't do what you need. You could probably get it done for about $200 or so, depending on how complicated it gets around the time the lake was built. I know an excellent one that lives and works in the Atlanta area but has done Tallapoosa County in the past when she still had a place here, but she still comes over sometime. In fact she is President of my "Warm Water Friends Club". If you are interested I will see her this weekend or I can put you in direct contact with her. Anecdotes and stories of the  great prowess of this or that lawyer mean less than nothing. The only thing that. Matters is what the deeds say. Good luck please post what you eventually find out.