I know this one is destroyed, now what?

[Steveg160]

I know for a fact that KU3108 is destroyed. This benchmark is a water tower located in the Village of Hempstead. I know this because I am an employee of the Village of Hempstead Water Department. The tank described by in the documented history (by NGS) from 1966 was actually the old tank. The current tank is much different and about 50ft east of the old tank. My question is what do I do with this information now?

[+pgrig]

Hi Steveg160--

 

The form for making an NGS report is here. Note the instructions given here under (1) for reporting a destroyed mark. You don't actually use the form. Instead, you email Deb Brown and describe your reasons for believing that the mark has been destroyed, with a photo if appropriate. She then evaluates your info and decides whether to make the "destroyed" designation, which she handles for you in the database. This keeps us amateurs from laying waste inappropriately to the NGS database.

 

Regards,

-Paul

[+Harry Dolphin]

And proper documentation works wonders! Photo of First Avenue School in 1935. Photo of "low income housing built of the site of the old First Avenue School", from municipal website. Since you work for the Village of Hempstead, you should be able to dig up some documentation. (That's not the water tower that I logged? Is it?)

[tosborn]

I thought we were told that NGS was no longer interested in receiving reports for destroyed intersection stations.

[AZcachemeister]

I thought we were told that NGS was no longer interested in receiving reports for destroyed intersection stations.

 

They ARE interested if the object has been destroyed so the database can be 'cleaned up'.

They ARE NOT interested in reports for existent intersection stations, since they are no longer useful.

[tosborn]

Thanks for the clarification.

 

In an earlier discussion of intersection stations, Holograph had the following to say:

 

Also, if you succeed in convincing the NGS that the station is destroyed, then the datasheet becomes inaccessible. Some of us who use datasheets for historical purposes prefer that the datasheets remain accessible, and one way to do that is to simply submit a "not found" report and state that the tower was removed in 1987.

 

I agree with his sentiments concerning leaving the datasheet accessible.

[mloser]

I disagree with the desire to keep these records alive. I think it is poor practice to circumvent the NGS's data policy in order to keep records alive for our own use. I am pretty sure the NGS removes these records from the active database to reduce clutter. The process of getting a mark declared destroyed is stringent enough that we can be almost certain that they do not exist, and therefore they do not belong in a database of active marks. They do remain in the database though, and can be retrieved through a process the NGS provides. Marking a status as Not Found instead of Destroyed is essentially false information. I make a special point of looking for Not Found marks in the hope that I can convert them to Found, but if a destroyed stations is simply marked as Not Found it would be a waste of time.

[foxtrot_xray]

I agree with Mloser, and on top of that, you CAN access the datasheet, just query it's PID directly. This is the government. Nothing's lost forever.

[+pgrig]

Yes, but...

 

If you are searching an area for a certain type of mark (like WW2 fire control towers), perhaps using Scaredy Cat's fine utility, the "Destroyed" marks fall off the map, and since you don't know their PIDs, you're SOL. I now report these old marks that I find to be destroyed as NF and put "lost" in the description, with an explanation. I win, and so does anyone else looking for a destroyed mark I've verified as such. [if the mark looks with historical merit, I may go ahead and consign it to the Dustbin of the Destroyed...

[Wintertime]

Well, one of the advantages of having an old snapshot of the NGS database here on Geocaching.com is that those stations still exist here, too. :-)

[AZcachemeister]

Well, one of the advantages of having an old snapshot of the NGS database here on Geocaching.com is that those stations still exist here, too. :-)

 

Good point!

[glorkar]

I have to agree that if it truly is destroyed, it should be marked as such. If I'm looking for a water tower or smokestack or something like that, I want to see the actual structure. Having someone tell me, "back in the day, this used to be here" just doesn't have the same effect. I mean, what's the point of looking for something you can never find?

[2oldfarts (the rockhounders)]

Yes, but...

 

If you are searching an area for a certain type of mark (like WW2 fire control towers), perhaps using Scaredy Cat's fine utility, the "Destroyed" marks fall off the map, and since you don't know their PIDs, you're SOL. I now report these old marks that I find to be destroyed as NF and put "lost" in the description, with an explanation. I win, and so does anyone else looking for a destroyed mark I've verified as such. [if the mark looks with historical merit, I may go ahead and consign it to the Dustbin of the Destroyed...

 

You can still query the NGS database for destroyed marks, even without the PID. Click here then select by county. Choose your state and county as needed then right below the list of counties select "Destroyed". See picture.

 

 

The marks are still available if you take the time to request them.

 

John