Utility Pole Outside The Easement: What Texas Landowners Can Do

In January 2026, a Bexar County landowner discovered something that thousands of Texas property owners eventually face: a utility company had installed power poles on her property — but the poles sat outside the recorded easement boundary. The utility's own internal correspondence, obtained later, confirmed staff had known the poles needed to be located approximately ten feet east of the easement. The poles went in anyway. When the landowner's attorney asked for the poles to be moved, the utility offered $20,000 — or threatened to use condemnation.

That dispute, reported by KSAT Investigates, is not an isolated case. It is the recurring pattern landowners encounter when utility infrastructure ends up outside the recorded right-of-way: the utility presents the situation as resolved through a payment offer, frames any pushback as obstruction, and treats relocation as not on the table. The landowner is left holding the cost of pushing back.

This article covers what Texas law gives you as a landowner when a pole is installed outside the easement, what evidence preserves your position, and the specific steps — including a new state framework that took effect under HB 144 — that protect your rights.

What An Easement Actually Gives The Utility

A utility easement is a property right — granted, in most cases, by a prior owner of the land or by court order — that allows a utility to use a specific portion of your property for a specific purpose. The easement does not transfer ownership. You still own the underlying land. The utility owns the right to enter, install, maintain, and operate infrastructure within the precisely described area documented in the recorded easement instrument.

The defining word is “precisely.” A recorded easement typically describes the granted area using a metes-and-bounds description, a strip of specified width along a property line, or a reference to a recorded plat. Anything outside that described area is your property in the full ordinary sense — the utility has no easement right to install, occupy, or use it.

When utility infrastructure ends up outside the recorded easement description, the analysis is straightforward: the utility is using your property without a legal right. Texas courts have addressed this scenario in trespass, declaratory judgment, and injunctive relief frameworks for over a century. The remedies depend on the facts — but the underlying principle does not change.

What House Bill 144 Changed For Texas Landowners

In June 2025, the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 144, which added Section 38.103 to the Texas Utilities Code. The statute requires every electric utility, electric cooperative, and municipally owned utility serving customers in Texas to file an infrastructure inspection and management plan with the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) by January 1, 2027. The plan must document the utility's processes for inspection, repair, vegetation management, personnel training, and — significant for landowners — responding to landowner complaints.

HB 144 does not create a private right of action. It does not give individual landowners a new lawsuit. What it does is require utilities to formally document how they respond to landowner complaints, and to report inspection results monthly to the PUCT. For landowners with a pole-related dispute, that changes the documentation environment in three concrete ways.

First, every landowner complaint a utility receives becomes part of a process the PUCT can review. Utilities cannot treat complaints as informal noise to be deflected. The complaint, the utility's response, and the resolution become traceable elements of the utility's regulatory posture.

Second, the monthly reporting requirement creates a public record framework. Records that previously existed only inside a utility's internal systems now feed into PUCT submissions that auditors and outside reviewers can examine.

Third, and most consequentially for an easement-boundary dispute, the documentation a landowner submits to the utility is no longer a private exchange. It becomes part of the utility's compliance record. A landowner who reports a pole installed outside the recorded easement, with photographs, GPS coordinates, and timestamps, is creating evidence the utility must address through its HB 144 complaint process.

The Evidence That Protects Your Position

An easement-boundary dispute lives or dies on evidence. The most common reason landowners lose ground in these disputes is that the evidentiary record at the start is weaker than the utility's evidentiary record at the end. The asymmetry is correctable, but it requires the landowner to build the record early.

Five pieces of evidence carry the most weight in an easement-boundary dispute.

• The recorded easement instrument. Pull a current copy from the county clerk's office. Read the description carefully — the metes-and-bounds language, the width, the references to a recorded plat. Many easements are decades old, and the language can be unclear; that ambiguity does not entitle the utility to expand into new territory.
• A current survey. If the recorded easement is described relative to a plat or a prior survey, a current professional survey establishes where the easement actually sits on your land today. The survey defines the boundary the dispute will turn on.
• Geotagged photographs of the disputed pole. Photographs of the pole, the surrounding area, and the easement boundary markers — with GPS coordinates and capture timestamps preserved in the file metadata — establish the factual record of where the pole actually is today.
• Written correspondence with the utility. Every communication with the utility — emails, letters, recorded phone notes — becomes evidence. Utilities sometimes acknowledge in writing what they will not acknowledge in negotiation. Save every exchange.
• Documentation that survives challenge. Standard cell-phone photographs can have their metadata stripped, modified, or lost. Records held only in private email accounts can be questioned later. Documentation that pairs the photograph with a tamper-evident hash, a public verification path, and a timestamp that cannot be retroactively changed survives the kinds of challenges utilities make when disputes reach formal review.

The fifth point is where most landowners are vulnerable. The same evidence that looks strong on day one — a phone photo, a quick email — can look weak six months later when a utility's outside counsel asks whether the EXIF data has been altered. A forensic documentation layer with public verification eliminates that vulnerability.

Steps Texas Landowners Can Take

The sequence below works for the most common easement-boundary scenarios. Specific facts vary, and a real estate attorney with Texas utility easement experience can adapt these steps to your situation.

1. Document the pole now. Take photographs from multiple angles, including the easement boundary if it is identifiable on the ground. Capture GPS coordinates. Note the date and time. Doing this on day one — before any conversation with the utility — preserves the unaltered factual record. AcreSeal's free reporting tool produces forensic-grade documentation with a public verification URL, designed for exactly this scenario.
2. Pull the recorded easement. Visit the county clerk's office or use the county's online deed records to obtain a current copy of every utility easement affecting your property. Compare the recorded description against the actual pole location.
3. Consider a current survey. If the easement description is ambiguous or refers to a plat, a current survey by a licensed Texas surveyor establishes the boundary the dispute will turn on. The survey cost is often a fraction of the value at stake.
4. File a written complaint with the utility. Send a written complaint identifying the pole location, attaching photographs and the easement description, and requesting either relocation or formal resolution. Under HB 144, the utility must process this complaint through its documented complaint procedure. Keep the original transmission record.
5. If the utility does not respond satisfactorily, escalate to the PUCT. The Public Utility Commission of Texas accepts consumer complaints. A complaint that involves a documented easement boundary dispute, with photographs and a forensic verification path, is a substantively different complaint than a phone call.
6. Consult a real estate attorney with Texas utility easement experience. Easement boundary disputes are fact-intensive. An attorney familiar with Texas Utilities Code Chapter 181 (utility easement authority) and Chapter 38 (HB 144) can evaluate trespass, declaratory judgment, and injunctive relief options.

The sequence works because it builds the evidentiary record before the negotiation begins. Utilities respond differently to a landowner who arrives with five pieces of documented evidence than to a landowner who arrives with a complaint and no record.

Why Documentation Matters More Now Than Before

HB 144 changes the documentation environment in both directions. Texas utilities must now maintain forensic-grade records of pole inspections, maintenance events, and complaint responses, and report them monthly to the PUCT. The same standard applies to landowner evidence. A complaint backed by a tamper-evident photograph and a public verification URL meets the utility's own documentation standard. A complaint backed by an unverified phone photograph does not.

The asymmetry that worked against landowners for decades — the utility had inspection records, GIS data, and counsel; the landowner had a photo on a phone — is closing. The closing requires the landowner to use the documentation tools now available.

For broader context on how HB 144 affects landowners, our utility pole responsibility guide covers ownership, complaint mechanisms, and state-by-state rights. For the underlying framework, our Texas pole property rights guide covers the easement law foundation. For situations involving leaning or damaged poles, our leaning pole guide covers the reporting workflow.

When This Analysis Does Not Apply

Three situations sit outside the easement-boundary framework discussed above.

Poles in public right-of-way. Many Texas distribution poles sit in TxDOT right-of-way along farm-to-market roads and state highways — not on private property at all. If the pole is in TxDOT ROW, the analysis is different. TxDOT's utility accommodation policy governs.

Blanket easements. Some older easements grant the utility a “blanket” right across the entire property rather than a defined area. Blanket easement disputes turn on different legal questions and require attorney review.

Eminent domain proceedings. If the utility has initiated condemnation under Texas Utilities Code Chapter 181, the landowner's rights, including the right to compensation and the right to challenge the necessity of the taking, are governed by Texas Property Code Chapter 21. Eminent domain proceedings are formal; they require legal counsel.