AGRICULTURE CODE

TITLE 7. SOIL AND WATER CONSERVATION

CHAPTER 201. SOIL AND WATER CONSERVATION

SUBCHAPTER A. GENERAL PROVISIONS

Sec. 201.001.  FINDINGS, PURPOSE, AND POLICY.  (a)  The legislature finds that the farm and grazing lands of the State of Texas are among the basic assets of the state and that the preservation of these lands is necessary to protect and promote the health, safety, and general welfare of its people;  that improper land-use practices have caused and have contributed to, and are now causing and contributing to, progressively more serious erosion of the farm and grazing lands of this state by wind and water;  that the breaking of natural grass, plant, and forest cover has interfered with the natural factors of soil stabilization, causing loosening of soil and exhaustion of humus, and developing a soil condition that favors erosion;  that the topsoil is being blown and washed out of fields and pastures;  that there has been an accelerated washing of sloping fields;  that these processes of erosion by wind and water speed up with removal of absorptive topsoil, causing exposure of less absorptive and less protective but more erosive subsoil;  that failure by an occupier of land to conserve the soil and control erosion upon the land causes a washing and blowing of soil and water onto other lands and makes the conservation of soil and control of erosion on those other lands difficult or impossible.
(b)  The consequences of soil erosion in the form of soil-blowing and soil-washing are the silting and sedimentation of stream channels, reservoirs, dams, ditches, and harbors;  the loss of fertile soil material in dust storms;  the piling up of soil on lower slopes, and its deposit over alluvial plains;  the reduction in productivity or outright ruin of rich bottom lands by overwash of poor subsoil material, sand, and gravel swept out of the hills;  deterioration of soil and its fertility, deterioration of crops, and declining acre yields despite development of scientific processes for increasing such yields;  loss of soil and water that causes destruction of food and cover for wildlife;  a blowing and washing of soil into streams that silt over spawning beds and destroy waterplants, diminishing the food supply of fish;  a diminishing of the underground water reserve that causes water shortages, intensifies periods of drought, and causes crop failures;  an increase in the speed and volume of rainfall runoff, causing severe and increasing floods that bring suffering, disease, and death;  impoverishment of families attempting to farm eroding and eroded lands;  damage to roads, highways, railways, farm buildings, and other property from floods and from dust storms;  and losses in navigation, hydroelectric power, municipal water supply, irrigation developments, farming, and grazing.
(c)  In order to conserve soil resources and control and prevent soil erosion, it is necessary that land-use practices contributing to soil waste and soil erosion may be discouraged and discontinued, and appropriate soil-conserving land-use practices be adopted and carried out.  Among the procedures necessary for widespread adoption are engineering operations such as the construction of terraces, terrace outlets, check dams, dikes, ponds, ditches, and the like;  the utilization of strip-cropping, lister furrowing, contour cultivating, and contour furrowing;  land irrigation;  seeding and planting of waste, sloping, abandoned, or eroded lands to water-conserving and erosion-preventing plants, trees, and grasses;  forestation and reforestation;  rotation of crops, soil stabilization with trees, grasses, legumes, and other thick-growing, soil-holding crops, retardation of runoff by increasing absorption of rainfall;  and retirement from cultivation of steep, highly erosive areas and areas now badly gullied or otherwise eroded.
(d)  It is the policy of the legislature to provide for the conservation of soil and related resources of this state and for the control and prevention of soil erosion, and thereby to preserve natural resources, control floods, prevent impairment of dams and reservoirs, assist in maintaining the navigability of rivers and harbors, preserve wildlife, protect the tax base, protect public lands, and protect and promote the health, safety, and general welfare of the people of this state, and thus to carry out the mandate expressed in Article XVI, Section 59a, of the Texas Constitution.  It is further declared as a matter of legislative intent and determination of policy that the State Soil and Water Conservation Board is the state agency responsible for implementing the constitutional provisions and state laws relating to the conservation and protection of soil resources.
Acts 1981, 67th Leg., p. 1458, ch. 388, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1981.  Amended by Acts 1985, 69th Leg., ch. 611, Sec. 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1985.