A service strip is a utility easement: a narrow corridor along the edge of your lot where a utility company or municipality has the recorded right to install, access, and maintain infrastructure like water mains, sewer lines, gas pipes, electrical conduits, and fiber cables. You own the land, pay taxes on it, and can walk on it and mow it. What you cannot do is block access or damage what runs through it. The restriction is written into your deed, it transfers to every future owner, and violating it can cost you a structure, a tree, or a very large repair bill.
What Runs Through It and How Wide It Is
Residential service strips commonly run 10 to 30 feet wide, with some reaching 50 feet for major transmission infrastructure. The corridor usually sits along the front of a lot parallel to the street or along the rear property line in subdivisions, and side-yard strips exist as well.
Most of the infrastructure is buried: water mains, sanitary sewer lines, natural gas pipelines, electrical conduits, fiber optic cables. Some sits above ground: utility poles, transformer boxes, cable junction cabinets, fire hydrants. The strip exists so crews can reach any of it for inspections, routine maintenance, and emergency repairs without having to ask you first.
Who Actually Has the Rights
You hold full title to the parcel, including the strip. A separate legal interest, the easement, gives the utility company the right to use that corridor for its equipment. Utility easements are almost always classified as easements in gross, meaning they benefit a specific entity (a power company, a water authority) rather than a neighboring piece of land. The utility doesn’t need to own property nearby to hold rights across yours.
The easement is recorded with your deed and runs with the land. It transfers automatically when the property sells. The recorded document itself defines the exact boundaries, the type of infrastructure allowed, and what the utility can and cannot do inside the corridor. That language controls everything, which is why the recorded document is the first thing to read before planning any work near your property lines.
What You Cannot Do on the Strip
Permanent structures are the firmest line. You cannot build anything inside the easement that would block access to the infrastructure: no garages, sheds, decks, patios, home additions, or concrete retaining walls. If a structure goes up anyway, the utility has the legal right to remove it, and you pay for the removal.
Landscaping comes next. Deep-rooted trees and large shrubs are typically prohibited because roots can crack, shift, or infiltrate buried lines over time. Where planting is allowed at all, it tends to be limited to shallow-rooted ground cover, ornamental grasses, or small plants that won’t grow tall enough to interfere with above-ground equipment or wide enough to block an access path.
Fences cause more trouble than people expect. A privacy fence planned along the property line often turns out to sit partly inside the strip, and a continuous barrier that prevents crews from reaching the corridor from the street or an adjacent lot is generally not allowed.
Grading changes count too. Filling low spots, raising or lowering the soil level, or redirecting drainage inside the easement can undermine supports, shift buried lines, or push water somewhere it damages infrastructure. Even minor regrading typically needs advance approval from the utility before any soil moves.
Temporary items like swing sets, sandboxes, or raised garden beds often require written approval from the utility or local planning department. Putting them in without permission exposes you to forced removal and liability for anything damaged underneath. When in doubt, ask first.
What You Can Do on the Strip
You are not locked out of the corridor. You keep the right to use the surface for anything that doesn’t interfere with access or damage the infrastructure. Mowing, walking across it, watering, weeding, and maintaining shallow plantings are all generally fine. Most homeowners treat the strip as part of the regular yard for upkeep purposes, and that’s what’s expected.
The working test: if a crew showed up tomorrow and could do their work without moving anything you placed there, you’re probably in safe territory. For anything beyond basic surface use, get written confirmation from the utility or planning department before you spend money. Some jurisdictions allow removable items like portable basketball hoops with advance permission; others draw a hard line at anything inside the corridor.
Call 811 Before You Dig
Federal law requires anyone planning to excavate, including a homeowner on a weekend project, to contact the national one-call notification system (811) first. The rule covers any digging, trenching, or tunneling near underground utilities, inside a marked easement or not. Every state has adopted a one-call system, so this is universal.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 49 USC 60114 – One-Call Notification Systems
After you call, utility companies send crews to mark their buried lines with color-coded paint or flags, usually within a few business days. The call is free and takes minutes.
Skipping the call is a federal crime when it leads to pipeline damage. A person who knowingly excavates without using the one-call system and damages a pipeline faces fines and up to five years in federal prison, with higher ceilings when the damage causes death. Even defacing a pipeline marker sign can carry up to a year.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 49 USC 60123 – Criminal Penalties
Civil liability sits on top of that. You can be billed for the full cost of repairing a severed line and compensating anyone affected by a service outage. A ruptured gas main or cut fiber trunk line can run into tens of thousands of dollars.
Who Pays When Something Goes Wrong
Maintenance splits cleanly. The utility is responsible for the infrastructure itself: pipes, cables, conduits, junction boxes, above-ground equipment. You are responsible for the surface: mowing, weed control, approved landscaping, and keeping the area accessible. Overgrown vegetation that blocks a crew from reaching the strip is your problem to clear.
Liability tracks fault. Dig without calling 811, build a prohibited structure, or otherwise damage a line through your own actions, and the repair cost and outage liability land on you.
When the utility damages your property during legitimate work, by tearing up approved landscaping, cracking a sidewalk, or rutting your lawn with heavy equipment, it is generally responsible for restoring the property to its prior condition. But most easement agreements include a clause that exempts the utility from any obligation to replace or compensate you for unauthorized structures or plantings. If a crew removes your unpermitted shed or cuts down a prohibited tree to reach a buried line, you have no claim.
You can also be liable for injuries to utility workers caused by hazards you created on the strip, such as a concealed hole, unstable ground from unauthorized digging, or a tripping hazard. Keeping the surface in safe, maintained condition is the simplest protection.
How to Find Your Property’s Easement
Start with your deed and title report. Both should reference the recorded subdivision plat or a specific easement agreement by book and page number. The deed may describe the strip’s width and location in words; the plat map shows it visually.
The subdivision plat is filed with your county recorder or register of deeds. If you bought the home recently, the title company that handled closing should have a copy. If not, the recorder’s office can provide one for a small fee.
One trap worth knowing: the document creating the easement may not use the word “easement” in its title. It might be labeled as a right-of-way dedication, a utility reservation, or buried in the subdivision conditions. A thorough title search catches these. If anything is unclear, contact your local utility companies directly and ask whether they hold easements on your parcel. Most will tell you, and some will send a technician to physically mark the corridor.
Getting an Unused Easement Removed
If a service strip on your property holds no active infrastructure and hasn’t been used in years, you can sometimes have it formally removed through a process called vacation. It is not automatic, and the bar is high, but it is possible when the corridor has genuinely gone obsolete.
You petition the local government or the entity holding the easement. You generally need to show that no utilities currently occupy the strip, no future use is planned, and vacating it won’t harm public infrastructure or neighboring properties. Most jurisdictions require a formal application, a survey or site plan of the area to be vacated, a legal description, and written confirmation from every utility serving the area that it holds no facilities in the corridor and has no plans to install any. A public hearing usually follows, adjacent owners get notice and can object, and if the governing body approves, it passes an ordinance vacating the easement and the change is recorded.
Abandonment is a different and harder argument. Non-use alone, even for decades, generally isn’t enough. Most jurisdictions require evidence of both intent to abandon and some affirmative act showing the holder permanently gave up its rights. A utility that stops using a corridor without formally releasing it still holds the easement. The vacation petition is the more reliable path.
Effect on Property Value
A standard underground utility easement along a property edge, the kind most residential lots have, tends to have a modest effect on resale because every neighboring lot carries the same restriction. Buyers expect it.
Larger easements change the picture. Properties next to high-voltage transmission lines or major pipeline corridors can see substantially larger reductions in market value, driven by both the physical infrastructure and buyer perception of safety and aesthetics. Even when the easement doesn’t take up usable living space, the effect on buyers can lower offers or send them elsewhere.
Whether your tax assessor reflects the easement in your assessed value varies by jurisdiction. Some reduce the land’s usable area in the calculation; others assess the full parcel at market rate regardless. If you believe the easement materially limits your value and your assessment doesn’t show it, your county assessor’s office can tell you how to appeal.