I stand corrected

So I emailed back and forth with the man who located our water pipe a year ago when we excavated the foundations, and sure enough, he said there wasn't a tracing wire on the pipe, and it was too deep to detect by metal detector, so he did indeed "witch" it. He said it wasn't a reliable way to guarantee where the pipe was, though. 

Well. So last year when we excavated, no one told us we were relying on witching. Luckily it all went okay and we didn't hit the pipe. But shouldn't someone have told us at that time that the marked location was unreliable? I suppose in the end it doesn't matter, because the children next door made off with the little blue flags anyway, and we had to rely on a little hand-drawn diagram stuck to the utility room wall.

So this brings me to the next question: if they witched it last year, can't they witch it this year? According to the Township, Bill 93 prohibits them from locating utilities on private property, but I've looked at Bill 93 and I don't see that in there. And isn't the whole purpose of locating in the first place to locate on private property? 

In the end, we're left with no resolution at all. We'll have to dig blind. I can't afford to do the septic this year anyway, as it turns out, since we're having to do the roof instead, so we'll go through this whole location fiasco again next year, I suppose.

Still, witching ... Am I the only one who feels it's so 17th century?