(Spirit Lake)– Soil and how much of it can be allowed to be loss due to wind or water erosion will be the topic of a public hearing later this month in Spirit Lake.
The Dickinson County Soil and Water Conservation District will conduct the hearing at 9:00 a.m. Thursday, December 20th at its office on Highway 9 just west of the KUOO studios in Spirit Lake.
District Conservationist Mark Schutt tells KUOO news the hearing will outline changes in regulations that will establish new allowable rates for soil loss on various classifications of land in the county…(click here for comment.) “There’s been advances in soil surveys and changes in how we classify soils and those are being implement statewide. Dickinson county this year is one of the one third of the state that we’re going to formally, the soil conservation district will formally adopt some changes to the tolerable soil loss limits for different soil types in the county. We’re having a public hearing just for the public to be aprised of those changes. They’re not real sweeping changes, they’re usually minor soil mapping units in the county. It could affect some soil conservation plans on lands that are brought into production, make the conservation plan slightly more strict, I guess.”
Schutt says the new regulations are based on a map of the county’s soils that came out last year, which is available for review at the Soil and Water Conservation District Office…(Click here for comment.) “So we do have copies of those soil surveys which are digital now. These changes were in addition to those made at that time. New soils were added to the county that producers may not be familiar with. We had a public hearing last year to go over that.”
Schutt adds the public hearing is required under Iowa law because of the amended regulations being proposed…(click here for comment.) “It mainly pertains to if the district ever had a soil loss complaint, these new revised numbers are the ones that NRCS would use in determining what level someone had to do to address a soil loss complaint.”
Again the hearing will be held at 9:00 a.m. Thursday, December 20th at the Dickinson County Soil and Water Conservation District Office on Highway 9 on the west edge of Spirit Lake.
