The status of state and local LESA programs

Excerpt

The land evaluation and site assessment (LESA) system was designed by the USDA Soil Conservation Service (SCS) “to determine the quality of land for agricultural uses and to assess sites or land areas for their agricultural economic viability” (9). The Federal Farmland Protection Policy Act of 1981 gave LESA prominence by requiring its use by federal agencies, but the system is also used by many local governments. A limited inventory of local governments' use of LESA was conducted in 1985 (6), but the first comprehensive study was recently completed (5). The comprehensive study, based on a mailed survey questionnaire and analysis of the elements of locally adopted LESA systems, covers the national distribution and extent of adoption, the process by which local jurisdictions formulated their LESA systems, the questions they have addressed with LESA, and the degree of reliability they ascribed to LESA scores.

The LESA system for rating land consists of two components: land evaluation (LE) and site assessment (SA). Several factors make up each component. A site is rated on each of the factors. Before adding the factor ratings, the individual factors are weighted and the two components, LE and SA, are also weighted. The …