CHAPTER 266 - COORDINATE SYSTEM ESTABLISHING SYSTEM FOR DESIGNATING POSITIONS ON SURFACE OF EARTH
AN ACT TO DESCRIBE, DEFINE, AND OFFICIALLY ADOPT A SYSTEM OF COORDINATES FOR DESIGNATING AND STATING THE POSITIONS OF POINTS ON THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH WITHIN THE STATE OF DELAWARE.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Delaware in General Assembly met:
Section 1. The system of plane coordinates which has been established by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey for defining and stating the positions or locations of points on the surface of the earth within the State of Delaware is hereafter to be known and designated as the "Delaware Coordinate System".
Section 2. The plane coordinates of a point on the earth's surface, to be used in expressing the position or location of such point on the Delaware Coordinate System, shall consist of two distances, expressed in feet and decimals of a foot. One of these distances, to be known as the "x-coordinate", shall give the position in an east-and-west direction; the other, to be known as the "y-coordinate", shall give the position in a north-and-south direction. These coordinates shall be made to depend upon and conform to the coordinates, on the Delaware Coordinate System, of the triangulation and traverse stations of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey within the State of Delaware, as those coordinates have been determined by said survey.
Section 3. (a) For purposes of more precisely defining the Delaware Coordinate System, the following definition by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey is adopted:
The Delaware Coordinate System is a transverse Mercator projection of the Clarke spheroid of 1866, having a central meridian 75° 25' west of Greenwich, on which meridian the scale is set one part in 200,000 too small. The origin of coordinates is at the intersection of the meridian 75° 25' west of Greenwich and the parallel 38° 00' north latitude. This origin is given the coordinates: x=500,000 feet and y=0 feet.
(b) The position of the Delaware Coordinate System shall be as marked on the ground by triangulation or traverse stations established in conformity with standards adopted by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey for first-order and second-order work, whose geodetic positions have been rigidly adjusted on the North American datum of 1927, and whose coordinates have been computed on the system herewith defined. Any such station may be used for establishing a survey connection with the Delaware Coordinate System.
Section 4. No coordinates based on the Delaware Coordinate System, purporting to define the position of a point on a land boundary, shall be presented to be recorded in any public land records or deed records unless such point is within one-half mile of a triangulation or traverse station established in conformity with the standards prescribed in Section 3 of this Act; Provided that said one-half mile limitation may be modified by a duly authorized State agency to meet local conditions.
Section 5. The use of the term "Delaware Coordinate System" on any map, report of survey, or other document, shall be limited to coordinates based on the Delaware Coordinate System as defined in this Act.
Section 6. Nothing contained in this Act shall require any purchaser or mortgagee to rely on a description, any part of which depends exclusively upon the Delaware Coordinate System.
Section 7. If any -provision of this Act shall be declared invalid, such invalidity shall not affect any other portion of this Act which can be given effect without the invalid provision, and to this end the provisions of this Act are declared to be severable.
Approved March 27, 1945.