[Talk-us-massachusetts] Talk-us-massachusetts Digest, Vol 44, Issue 1

[Yury Yatsynovich]

Thanks, Greg!!
I've also sent a brief email to MassGIS asking about possible sources that
could be used to confirm parts of towns' boundaries aligned with rivers.

On Fri, May 29, 2020 at 10:40 AM Greg Troxel <gdt at lexort.com> wrote:

> Yury Yatsynovich <yury.yatsynovich at gmail.com> writes:
>
> > Sorry, Greg, I could have explained in more clearly.
> > Here is an example of a border between Newton and Watertown:
> > The way (https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/142866017) is the border
> between
> > Newton and Watertown and this way is, essentially, a duplicate of the
> > Charles River stream. Wikipedia says "From Watertown to Waltham to
> Needham
> > and Dedham <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedham,_Massachusetts>,
> Newton is
> > bounded by the Charles River <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_River>."
>
> wikipedia is not authoritative.   town boundaries are as I understand it
> defined by statute.
>
> > (this is also confirmed by town's GIS maps, but it would be great if
> anyone
> > could direct me to a formal document that says something like "the border
> > between Newton and Watertown goes along the middle of the Charles River")
> > -- so, almost certainly, the river itself is the border and if its stream
> > changes so does the border. Thus, I suggest excluding the way (
> > https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/142866017) from the border relations
> for
> > Newton and Watertown and including the corresponding part of the Charles
> > River instead. This will help to solve, besides removing duplicate ways,
> > the above mentioned problem of when the stream changes, so should the
> > border as well.
>
> I think this needs research into authoriative evidence before doing it.
> Absent that, I think our borders should follow the "towns survey" point
> layer from massgis.
>
>
> https://docs.digital.mass.gov/dataset/massgis-data-community-boundaries-towns-survey-points
>
> This layer talks about being derived from statute and also gives
> references to  atlases of boundaries.
>
> One of my friends is knowledgeable about this sort of thing and I will
> ask about this border and statute.
>
>

-- 
Yury Yatsynovich
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