The USLE in court

Excerpt

LAST year, another enforcement action under the much-discussed Iowa mandatory soil conservation statute was concluded in court. Although Iowa's soil conservation districts have exercised their regulatory authority many times, these actions have generated only two trials in the state's district courts. The latest case is not an important addition to soil conservation law because the landowners, who lost in district court, did not appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court; consequently, there is no widely disseminated record of the lawsuit. Nevertheless, the case presented a preview of a probable fighting issue in future enforcement litigation, whether such litigation involves court actions under mandatory soil conservation statutes or administrative actions concerning such things as crosscompliance regulations. That issue is how the universal soil loss equation (USLE) and its predictions can be used as evidence.

Courts, and to a lesser extent administrative tribunals, rely on statutory and case law when determining what can be used as evidence and how that evidence can be used in a trial. To date, however, there is not one reported case in the United States concerning the evidentiary problems presented by the USLE. The latest Iowa case was probably the first challenge leveled …