TY - JOUR T1 - An innovative county soil erosion control ordinance JF - Journal of Soil and Water Conservation SP - 374 LP - 378 VL - 45 IS - 3 AU - Philip H. Wheeler Y1 - 1990/05/01 UR - http://www.jswconline.org/content/45/3/374.abstract N2 - SOIL erosion has become a major concern of local governmental agencies as more responsibility for natural resource protection is turned over to local units of government by states and as the expansion of cropland into marginal areas generates high levels of soil erosion. Olmsted County, Minnesota, may be typical of midwestern counties in its erosion experience. Cropland acreage increased from 255,653 acres in 1974 to 272,790 acres in 1978, then reverted to 261,206 acres in 1982—increasing overall in spite of significant conversion of cropland to urban uses (8). The expansion brought a great deal of hilly land into row-crop production, with significant consequences in terms of erosion. According to estimates based on the National Resources Inventory (NRI) of 1982, erosion in Olmsted County averaged 10.2 tons per acre on cropland, with total soil movement on cropland of 2.4 million tons. More than half of this erosion occurred on soils in capability class III or higher; about one-sixth occurred in soils of class IV or higher (6). In 1985, the Olmsted County Board of Commissioners decided to incorporate farmland soil erosion controls into the county's zoning ordinance for several reasons. First, the county began … ER -