## Facts

- A neighboring landowner complained that erosion and runoff from the Ortner and Schrank farms damaged his property.
- After a second complaint, the Woodbury County Soil Conservation District investigated under Iowa law.
- The investigation found soil loss exceeding the District’s five-tons-per-acre-per-year limit, including ranges up to 77.2 tons/acre/year (Ortner) and 30.8 tons/acre/year (Schrank).
- The District issued an administrative order requiring the landowners to reduce soil loss within six months by either (1) seeding affected land to permanent pasture/hay or (2) terracing.
- Compliance would impose costs and reduce tillable acreage; state cost-sharing was required to cover at least 75% of mandated practices, leaving landowners to pay roughly one-quarter.
- The landowners claimed the required practices would reduce market value; the District disputed that claim.

## Issues

1. Whether Iowa Code § 467A.44 and implementing soil-loss regulations, requiring specified conservation practices with partial state cost-sharing, effected an unconstitutional taking or exceeded the State’s police power as applied to these landowners.

## Decision

- The Iowa Supreme Court reversed the trial court.
- The court held Iowa Code § 467A.44 and the District’s regulations were constitutional as applied.
- The court concluded the requirements were a valid exercise of police power and did not constitute a compensable taking.
- The case was remanded for further proceedings, allowing the enforcement action to continue under the upheld statute and regulations.

## Legal Principles

- A regulation becomes a compensable taking only when it goes “too far”; the determination is fact-specific.
- Takings analysis considers (1) the character of the governmental action, (2) the economic impact on the owner, and (3) interference with reasonable investment-backed expectations.
- Measures aimed at preventing public harm through generally applicable land-use regulation are more likely to be sustained as police-power action than treated as an appropriation for public use.
- Substantial compliance costs and some loss of profitable use do not, without more, establish a taking where the owner retains economically viable use.
- Cost-sharing and regulatory flexibility (providing alternative compliance methods) are relevant to the severity of the economic impact.

## Conclusion

The court upheld mandatory soil-erosion controls requiring landowners to adopt specified conservation practices, concluding the statute reasonably advanced a significant public purpose and, given continued productive use and partial public funding, did not impose a burden severe enough to constitute an unconstitutional taking.


Woodbury Cnty. Soil Conservation Dist. v. Ortner, 279 N.W.2d 276 (Iowa 1979)