I'm with Soggy Bottom Outdoors on this one. One of my farms has three ROWs on it, one for a water line, one for the electric company and one for a sewer line, all different easements, they don't share easements. Only the company holding the easement or their contractors are allowed access to maintain it, and since I had some problems with a contractor one time, I fenced it in and put in two gates. The electric company and the water district raised all kinds of h*ll over it and wanted me to allow them to put their own locks on the gates, even attempted to take me to court over it. Bottom line, county attorney told them that while I couldn't keep them off the property, I retained the right to know when they were on the property and as long as I unlocked the gates when needed and let them in to do their maintenance, nothing they could do.
The problem I had was that a tree trimming company took a short route to the place they needed to trim and the short route involved them driving through my garden and electric fence to get there, most of their trip wasn't even on the ROW. I blocked the main exit out of the farm and held them there until the Sheriff showed up. I didn't have much corn that year, but the trimming company paid me enough to buy a bunch of corn, and they had to put up new fence wire and fill in the ruts they'd cut through the garden. I made them haul in the dirt to fill the ruts, just because I was ticked off.
The county attorney said that since I'd been "abused" once, I had full legal right to take any steps needed to insure that it never happened again. Now an agent from the trimming company comes and talks to me personally two or three days before the crew shows up to arrange a gate opening and I can make sure that they drive where I direct them to drive.
The water company and sewer district said that since they had never 'abused' my property they should be exempt and have their own locks, but the County Attorney said that just because they hadn't, there were no guarantees that it wouldn't happen, so his decision stood.
I also used to have a lot of problems with people boating up the navigable creek on my line and camping out in the lower bottoms in the summer months, I'd have to clean the messes they left four or five times a year. Since most of the time it only happened on a Friday or Saturday night, I started making late night checks down there on my ATV to run them off. I never had to show or point a firearm, but I think that just them seeing the double barrel in the gun rack made somewhat of an impression on them. It took a couple of years to teach them all, but thank goodness I haven't had any campers for three or four years now.
