Surveyors to start visiting West Roxbury's Grove to try to figure out just where the lines are between city property and homeowners' land

A surveying contractor hired by the city should start sending crews into the Grove in a couple of weeks to try to mark out the exact borders between land owned by the Department of Neighborhood Development and residents.

The work in one of Boston's more unusual neighborhoods - where many of the roads remain unpaved and residents still use septic systems - is nothing sinister, Chris Rusk, Mayor Walsh's liaison to West Roxbury, told a meeting of the West Roxbury Civic and Improvement Association.

Over the years, he said, some residents have had trouble selling land because of the uncertainties of exact property lines - while others have started expanding their yards onto what is actually city property. Although the city is willing to sell pieces of land to neighbors, it can't do so without boundaries properly marked out.

Some residents expressed skepticism.

One noted the curious timing - just as Spectra Energy is getting ready to clear land for its high-pressure natural-gas transfer station on one end of the Grove. She said surveying works sometimes precedes efforts by pipeline companies to buy out or take land in what she called the "incineration zones" around such facilities.

Another resident noted Mayor Walsh's desire to build more affordable housing in the city and wondered if some of that might be targeted for the Grove.

Rusk said Mayor Walsh still opposes the transfer station, even though he has been unable to stop it and that the city has no plans to build anything in the Grove.