No Preemption by Refusal: Incidental Interference and State-Ordered Drainage Culverts Under the ICC Termination Act

I. Introduction

In Iowa Northern Railway Company v. Floyd County Board of Supervisors and Cerro Gordo County Board of Supervisors, acting as trustees for Joint Drainage District Nos. 6 and 56, the Iowa Supreme Court addressed a clash between federal railroad regulation and state drainage authority. The case required the court to decide whether the Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act of 1995 (the “ICC Termination Act” or “the Act”), with its broad preemption clause, bars a drainage district from compelling a railroad to accommodate improved water drainage across its right-of-way.

At the core of the dispute was a proposed 66-inch steel culvert to be installed through a railroad embankment by “jack-and-bore,” a trenchless method designed to allow the rail line to continue operating during construction. The joint drainage district, acting through the Floyd and Cerro Gordo County Boards of Supervisors, sought to require Iowa Northern Railway Company, a short-line carrier, to install or allow the installation of this culvert to modernize and lower an aging and inadequate stone box culvert constructed more than a century ago.

Iowa Northern opposed the project and sought a writ of mandamus to stop it, invoking federal preemption. It argued that:

• Iowa Code section 468.109 is categorically preempted by 49 U.S.C. § 10501(b); and
• Even if not categorically preempted, the state drainage authority is preempted as applied because the culvert project would unreasonably interfere with rail transportation.

The district court accepted both theories and issued a writ of mandamus enjoining the drainage district. The Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed. On further review, however, the Iowa Supreme Court vacated the court of appeals decision, reversed the district court, and remanded for entry of judgment in favor of the drainage district and dissolution of the writ.

The opinion, authored by Justice McDermott for a unanimous court, clarifies the limits of ICC Termination Act preemption in the context of routine infrastructure crossing disputes. Most notably, the court holds that:

• The Iowa drainage statutes authorizing drainage structures across railroad rights-of-way are not categorically preempted by the ICC Termination Act; and
• To succeed on an as-applied preemption claim, a railroad must show that the state action does more than incidentally affect rail transportation; a railroad cannot create preemption simply by declaring it will voluntarily halt operations during a safe, routine construction project.

II. Summary of the Opinion

A. Factual Background

The joint drainage district at issue serves farmland near Nora Springs, Iowa. Iowa Northern’s main line runs along a twenty-foot embankment that bisects a natural waterway within the district. An existing four-by-six-foot stone box culvert, estimated to date back to the 1870s, conveys water under the embankment. The tile and associated structures were in poor condition, with reported blowouts and blockages, and had not received substantial repairs since 1976.

After a landowner complaint in 2011 regarding inadequate drainage, an engineering study led to a 2014 report that proposed multiple options:

• Option 1: Repair existing structures.
• Option 2: Preferred by landowners and ultimately adopted—deepen open ditches on both sides of the embankment and install a new 66-inch steel culvert at a lower elevation, leaving the old stone culvert as overflow capacity.

The culvert would be installed using jack-and-bore, a trenchless method whereby a hydraulic jack pushes the pipe while an internal auger removes soil. Continuous monitoring would halt construction and train movement if track displacement exceeded one-quarter inch.

Iowa Northern contended the project posed unacceptable safety risks and would “bring Iowa Northern’s operations to a standstill,” asserting that it would not operate trains over the embankment while jack-and-bore was underway.

B. Procedural History

1. Iowa Northern filed a mandamus action seeking to prohibit the drainage district from carrying out the culvert project.
2. After a remand from the federal Surface Transportation Board, the Iowa district court held a bench trial and ruled for Iowa Northern, finding:
   • Federal law categorically preempted Iowa Code section 468.109; and
   • Even if not categorically preempted, the project risked instability that would interfere with rail operations and was therefore preempted as applied.
3. The Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed, emphasizing Iowa Northern’s asserted refusal to run trains during the jack-and-bore construction.
4. The Iowa Supreme Court granted further review and reversed.

C. Holdings

The Iowa Supreme Court held:

• The ICC Termination Act does not categorically preempt Iowa’s drainage statutes (Iowa Code §§ 468.109–.112) as applied to requiring a culvert under a railroad embankment.
• On the record presented, the culvert installation would impose at most an incidental effect on rail transportation and would not unreasonably burden railroad operations.
• Therefore, the ICC Termination Act does not preempt the drainage district’s authority, and Iowa Northern is not entitled to mandamus relief.
• The decision of the Court of Appeals is vacated, the district court’s judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded for entry of judgment for the defendants and dissolution of the writ.

III. Detailed Analysis

A. Statutory and Doctrinal Framework

1. The ICC Termination Act and 49 U.S.C. § 10501(b)

The ICC Termination Act abolished the Interstate Commerce Commission and vested primary regulatory authority over railroads in the Surface Transportation Board (STB). Central to this case is 49 U.S.C. § 10501(b), which:

• Grants the STB exclusive jurisdiction over “transportation by rail carriers” and over the “construction” and “operation” of rail lines and related facilities.
• Contains an explicit preemption clause: “the remedies provided under this part with respect to regulation of rail transportation are exclusive and preempt the remedies provided under Federal or State law.”
• Defines “transportation” broadly to include “a property, facility, instrumentality, or equipment of any kind related to the movement of passengers or property, or both, by rail.” 49 U.S.C. § 10102(9)(A).

Read literally, this language is expansive. Courts and the STB, however, have consistently limited its reach to avoid displacing ordinary exercises of state and local authority that only incidentally affect railroads.

2. Iowa Drainage District Authority

Under Iowa law, drainage districts are special governmental entities created to manage water drainage to enhance the productive use of farmland. County boards of supervisors manage these districts in a representative capacity.

Iowa Code chapter 468 gives drainage districts power to compel railroads to accommodate drainage across their rights-of-way:

• Section 468.109 authorizes districts to require railroads to “rebuild and reconstruct the necessary culvert or bridge where any ditch, drain, or watercourse crosses its right-of-way, so as not to obstruct, impede, or interfere with the free flow of the water.”
• Section 468.110 and related provisions outline procedures and responsibilities.
• Section 468.112 allows the drainage district to construct the improvement itself and assess the costs to the railway if the railway refuses.

3. Mandamus

A writ of mandamus under Iowa Code § 661.1 is an extraordinary remedy that compels a public body or official to take, or refrain from, some action “because the action is required or prohibited by law.” Here, Iowa Northern sought to use mandamus to prohibit the drainage district from exercising its statutory authority, arguing that federal preemption stripped that authority.

Because mandamus actions sound in equity, the Iowa Supreme Court reviewed the case de novo, giving weight but not conclusive deference to the district court’s factual findings, especially regarding credibility. See Iowa R. App. P. 6.904(3)(g); Fitzgarrald v. City of Iowa City, 492 N.W.2d 659, 663 (Iowa 1992) (en banc).

B. Precedents and Authorities Cited

1. Foundational Iowa Cases on Drainage Districts

• Hardin County Drainage Dist. 55, Div. 3, Lateral 10 v. Union Pac. R.R., 826 N.W.2d 507 (Iowa 2013)
  Cited to describe drainage districts as special governmental entities managing water drainage for farmland productivity.
• Bd. of Water Works Trs. v. SAC Cnty. Bd. of Supervisors, 890 N.W.2d 50 (Iowa 2017)
  Cited to confirm that county boards of supervisors act in a representative capacity in managing drainage district affairs, grounding the counties’ role as trustees for the joint district.

2. Griffioen and the Franks Test for As-Applied Preemption

The opinion’s most important Iowa precedent is Griffioen v. Cedar Rapids & Iowa City Ry., 914 N.W.2d 273 (Iowa 2018). There, landowners sued railroads after floods in Cedar Rapids, alleging that the railroads had parked rock-laden railcars on bridges to anchor them during flooding, which allegedly caused or worsened downstream flooding when some bridges and cars collapsed or acted like dams.

In Griffioen, the court adopted the Fifth Circuit’s test from Franks Investment Co. v. Union Pac. R.R., 593 F.3d 404 (5th Cir. 2010) (en banc) to determine whether state law claims are preempted:

• Preemption applies to state laws that effectively manage or govern rail transportation.
• State actions that impose only incidental effects on rail transportation are not preempted.

Applying this test, Griffioen held that the tort claims, by attempting to regulate where and when railroads could place railcars and how they could construct their bridges, did more than incidentally affect transportation. They sought to manage substantive operational decisions, and thus were preempted.

In the present case, the Iowa Supreme Court distinguishes Griffioen: unlike those flood-related tort claims aimed squarely at operational decision-making, the drainage district’s culvert project regulates only the accommodation of water flow under a single crossing in a way that, based on the evidence, imposes at most incidental burdens on operation.

3. Federal Circuit and STB Authorities on Categorical Preemption

The opinion draws heavily on authorities interpreting § 10501(b) and the STB’s view of categorical preemption:

• Emerson v. Kansas City S. Ry., 503 F.3d 1126 (10th Cir. 2007)
  Summarizes the STB’s two broad categories of state and local actions subject to categorical preemption:
  1. Permitting or preclearance regimes that can be used to deny a railroad the ability to conduct operations or proceed with STB-authorized activities (e.g., local environmental or demolition permits that can effectively veto railroad projects).
  2. State regulation of matters directly regulated by the STB, such as:
     • Construction, operation, and abandonment of lines;
     • Mergers, acquisitions, and consolidations;
     • Rates and service.
• City of Auburn v. U.S. Gov’t, 154 F.3d 1025 (9th Cir. 1998)
  Held that a local environmental permitting scheme was preempted because it could be used to prevent rail line improvements.
• Soo Line R.R. v. City of Minneapolis, 38 F. Supp. 2d 1096 (D. Minn. 1998)
  Held that a local demolition permit requirement was preempted because it could bar a railroad from demolishing its buildings, a matter within STB’s exclusive reach.
• STB declaratory orders such as CSX Transp., Inc.—Petition for Declaratory Order, STB Finance Docket No. 34662, 2005 WL 1024490 (S.T.B. May 3, 2005), are quoted via these cases to show STB’s own articulation of the two categories.

The Iowa Supreme Court uses these authorities to demonstrate that Iowa’s drainage statutes do not fit within either category and therefore are not categorically preempted.

4. Federal Cases on As-Applied Preemption and “Routine Crossing” Disputes

• Tubbs v. Surface Transp. Bd., 812 F.3d 1141 (8th Cir. 2015)
  Affirms that preemption applies to state actions that “unreasonably burden or interfere with rail transportation,” emphasizing the fact-intensive nature of that inquiry and citing Franks.
• MD Mall Assocs., LLC v. CSX Transp., Inc., 288 F. Supp. 3d 565 (E.D. Pa. 2017), aff’d, 777 F. App’x 43 (3d Cir. 2019)
  Notably, the federal district court concluded that an action to compel a railroad to install a drainage pipe was not preempted in the absence of evidence it would interfere with operations. The Iowa Supreme Court invokes this case directly as a close factual analogue.
• Green Mountain R.R. v. Vermont, 404 F.3d 638 (2d Cir. 2005)
  Quoted via Emerson for the proposition that states may exercise traditional police powers (e.g., health and safety regulation) over railroad property so long as:
  • Regulations protect public health and safety,
  • Are settled and defined,
  • Can be obeyed with reasonable certainty,
  • Do not entail extended or open-ended delays, and
  • Can be applied without subjective, discretionary decision-making.
• New Orleans & Gulf Coast Ry. v. Barrois, 533 F.3d 321 (5th Cir. 2008)
  Cited for the principle that “[r]outine crossing disputes are not typically preempted” and quoting STB authority to the effect that “routine, non-conflicting uses, such as non-exclusive easements for at-grade road crossings, wire crossings, sewer crossings, etc., are not preempted so long as they would not impede rail operations or pose undue safety risks.”
• Maumee & W. R.R.—Petition for Declaratory Order, STB Finance Docket No. 34354, 2004 WL 395835 (S.T.B. Mar. 3, 2004)
  STB declaratory order articulating the “routine crossings” framework quoted in Barrois and adopted by the Iowa Supreme Court to characterize this culvert dispute as “relatively routine.”

C. The Court’s Legal Reasoning

1. Categorical Preemption Rejected

Iowa Northern argued first that Iowa Code section 468.109 is categorically preempted because it conflicts with the STB’s exclusive authority over rail transportation, construction, and operations. The court analyzed this claim through the STB’s two-category framework (as explained in Emerson and CSX Transp.):

1. Permitting or Preclearance Schemes.
   The court held that the drainage statutes are not a form of “state or local permitting or preclearance” that could be used to deny a railroad the ability to conduct its operations or proceed with STB-authorized activities. Rather than conditioning rail operations on obtaining local permits, the statutes require the railroad to accommodate water flow by providing or allowing culverts or bridges across its right-of-way.
2. Direct Regulation of Matters Within STB’s Exclusive Domain.
   The second category covers state regulation of subjects that the STB directly regulates—such as line construction/abandonment, mergers, and rates. The Iowa Supreme Court concluded that the STB does not directly regulate the construction of subsurface drainage pipes that do not interfere with rail operations. Citing MD Mall, the court emphasized that, absent actual interference, actions to compel such drainage accommodations fall outside the STB’s core jurisdiction.

Because neither category applied, the court concluded that the ICC Termination Act does not categorically preempt Iowa’s drainage statutes.

2. As-Applied Preemption and “Incidental Interference”

The court then turned to Iowa Northern’s alternative theory—as-applied preemption—under the Franks/Griffioen test. Several key principles emerge from this analysis:

• Preemption applies only to state laws that have the effect of managing or governing rail transportation, i.e., that dictate operational or managerial decisions of the railroad.
• A state action that merely has an incidental effect on rail transportation is not preempted, even if it imposes some cost or inconvenience.
• The question whether an action “unreasonably burdens or interferes” with rail transportation is fact-intensive.
• The railroad bears the burden of proving that the specific state action imposes more than incidental interference. See Emerson, 503 F.3d at 1133.

a. Distinguishing Griffioen

The court contrasted the present case with Griffioen:

• Griffioen involved tort claims attacking the railroads’ operational decisions during a flood—where and how to place cars on bridges in an emergency—which went to the heart of how the railroads ran their trains and protected their infrastructure.
• Here, the drainage district’s actions do not dictate day-to-day operations, routing, scheduling, or bridge/track design. Rather, they seek the installation of a single culvert to ensure proper drainage under one embankment, using a method specifically designed not to interrupt rail service.

Accordingly, the court viewed the present case as a classic example of a “routine crossing dispute”, the type that the STB expects to be resolved in state courts and that are “not typically preempted.” Barrois, 533 F.3d at 332–33.

b. Evaluation of the Evidence: Jack-and-Bore and Safety Risks

Because the railroad claimed that the culvert project would imperil track stability and rail safety, the court undertook a detailed assessment of the evidence:

• Iowa Northern’s bridge engineer (Peter Schierloh) testified:
  • The existing stone culvert remained functional and stable.
  • Installing a new pipe close to the old culvert was “inherently unsafe” because the rough, jagged stones might extend unpredictably into the embankment, risking accidental contact by the boring equipment that could compromise the culvert and tracks.
  • He found the proposed quarter-inch track movement threshold insufficient reassurance.
• Iowa Northern’s former vice president and general counsel (Scott Bannister) testified:
  • The company deemed it “inherently unsafe” to allow trains over the site during jack-and-bore.
  • He cited a 2017 derailment near Plainfield, Illinois, in which a jack-and-bore culvert installation failed, causing track collapse and substantial loss (around $12 million).
  • Based on that incident and perceived risk, Iowa Northern declared that it “can’t and will not allow any train traffic” during the 3–7 days of the culvert installation.
• The drainage district’s experts offered countervailing evidence:
  • Geotechnical engineer (Matthew Reinsdorfer) carried out subsurface borings and ground-penetrating radar around the existing culvert. Some borings near the culvert contacted the stone structure; other borings slightly farther away reached bedrock without contact, suggesting a defined extent of the culvert and adequate clearance for a nearby bore.
  • Drainage engineer (Kent Rode), who had handled hundreds of drainage projects, testified that:
    • The existing stone culvert was too high to allow proper drainage.
    • The new steel culvert would be placed at a lower elevation to ensure better water flow.
    • To address safety concerns, the design had been modified to move the new culvert four feet farther away from the existing one.
  • Trenchless-construction expert (Scott Dullard), from The Driller, LLC:
    • His company had performed approximately 6,500 jack-and-bore installations, mostly under rail lines, without a single embankment failure or traffic interruption—“never fouled a railroad track.”
    • The Driller is a preferred contractor for major railroads (Union Pacific, Canadian National, Burlington Northern), and Iowa Northern itself had prior experience with jack-and-bore and had issued its own “standard specifications for boring and jacking casing pipe” for contractors.
    • The Plainfield derailment was, in his words, the result of “total incompetence”: the auger was allowed to advance 105 feet beyond the protective casing—effectively drilling an unsupported hole—contrary to basic safeguards. This failure was easily avoidable by keeping the auger within the casing, especially in clay or sand fill.
    • He testified that relocating the new culvert by four feet farther from the existing stone culvert was operationally feasible and did not raise new engineering concerns.
    • He characterized the project as having more pre-construction information (“gold”) than is typical—thanks to borings and ground-penetrating radar—further enhancing safety.

On de novo review, the court credited the drainage district’s expert testimony and characterized Iowa Northern’s safety concerns as overstated. It observed that jack-and-bore is the industry standard for installing utilities under active railways because it is specifically designed to avoid interference with surface traffic:

“While some risk of interference at the surface is inherent in any jack-and-bore pipeline installation, the likelihood that Iowa Northern’s rail transportation would be affected by the installation here appears vanishingly small. In our view, Iowa Northern’s claims about the safety risk unnecessarily catastrophize what the evidence suggests is a rather common construction practice.”

From this, the court concluded that the project’s effects on rail transportation were, at most, incidental, insufficient to trigger preemption under § 10501(b).

c. No “Preemption by Refusal”: The Railroad’s Voluntary Halt of Operations

A pivotal part of the court’s reasoning is its rejection of Iowa Northern’s attempt to leverage its own voluntary operating decisions into a claim of federal preemption. Both the district court and the court of appeals had taken at face value the railroad’s position that it “will not run its trains” during the jack-and-bore, and treated that self-imposed halt as evidence that the drainage project “relates to railroad transportation” and thus is preempted.

The Iowa Supreme Court decisively rejected this logic:

“A railroad can’t manufacture a claim of preemption by voluntarily choosing to halt operations in response to a proposed drainage improvement project. If the project can be performed safely—as the expert testimony regarding the 6,500 successful installations suggests—then Iowa Northern’s decision to stop trains is a business choice, not a necessity imposed by the drainage district’s action. To hold otherwise runs the risk of allowing railroads to veto any state infrastructure project simply by declaring a refusal to operate near it.”

This is a significant doctrinal point: preemption analysis turns on the objective nature and impact of the state action, not on how a regulated party chooses to react. A railroad cannot convert a minimally intrusive state requirement into a federally preempted “interference” merely by electing to suspend its own operations.

d. Characterizing the Dispute as “Routine” and Within State Police Powers

The court further framed the case within the line of authority holding that “routine crossing disputes are not typically preempted”:

• The culvert at issue is the functional equivalent of a sewer or utility crossing under a right-of-way.
• STB precedent (as recognized in Barrois and Maumee) explicitly treats non-exclusive, routine crossings (roads, wires, sewers, etc.) as not preempted so long as they do not impede rail operations or pose undue safety risks.
• The drainage project fits comfortably within traditional state police powers over land use and public safety, akin to the health and safety regulations endorsed in Green Mountain and Emerson.

The court concluded with a broader policy observation that captures the balance at stake:

“If a railroad could block the replacement of a failing drainage culvert under a rail line simply by invoking the possibility that trains would have to stop during brief periods of construction or the fact that an accident occurred in Illinois under different circumstances some years back, the unreasonable burden would be on farming—not railroading.”

D. Impact and Significance

1. Clarifying the Limits of ICC Termination Act Preemption in Iowa

The decision solidifies that, in Iowa:

• Iowa Code chapter 468’s grant of authority to drainage districts to compel railroads to rebuild or reconstruct culverts or bridges across their rights-of-way is fully operative, absent a concrete showing of more than incidental interference with rail operations.
• Railroads must carry the burden to prove that a particular project:
  • Falls into one of the STB’s categories of categorical preemption, or
  • As applied, imposes an unreasonable burden on transportation under the Franks/Griffioen standard.
• Generalized assertions of safety risk, or a railroad’s unilateral choice to halt operations, are insufficient to establish preemption where the underlying project is routine, well-engineered, and supported by industry practice.

2. Reinforcing the “Incidental Effect” Standard Nationwide

Although this is an Iowa state supreme court decision, it aligns Iowa doctrine with the prevailing approach in federal courts and the STB:

• Preemption is not triggered by mere incidental effects on rail transportation.
• Routine, non-conflicting utility and drainage crossings generally fall within state jurisdiction.
• States may exercise traditional police powers around health, safety, and land use so long as they do not effectively manage or govern how railroads run their lines.

In this sense, the opinion reinforces and concretizes federal precedents like Franks, Emerson, MD Mall, Green Mountain, and Barrois in the particular context of agricultural drainage infrastructure.

3. Practical Implications for Local Governments and Railroads

For drainage districts and local governments:

• The decision provides strong support for their authority to require railroads to accommodate essential drainage improvements under state law.
• It confirms that well-planned, safety-conscious projects—especially those using industry-standard methods like jack-and-bore—are unlikely to be preempted, absent specific evidence of serious operational interference.
• It encourages collaborative, engineering-driven solutions, noting favorably the district’s willingness to adjust the project (e.g., shifting the culvert an additional four feet) to address railroad concerns.

For railroads:

• The decision signals that preemption defenses against local infrastructure requirements will demand a robust factual showing of interference—not merely theoretical risks or reference to isolated past incidents.
• Railroads cannot secure preemption simply by choosing to shut down service whenever a local project is proposed; courts will look behind such decisions to the objective safety and operational impacts of the project.
• It may prompt railroads to engage earlier and more constructively with local governments on design details (e.g., monitoring thresholds, work stoppage protocols) rather than taking categorical positions against projects.

4. Balancing Agricultural Infrastructure and Interstate Rail Commerce

Substantively, the case underscores the importance of drainage infrastructure to Iowa agriculture. By characterizing the burden of allowing a safe culvert replacement as modest, and warning against shifting an “unreasonable burden” onto farming, the court recognizes that:

• Railroads are critical to interstate commerce, but so is effective agricultural drainage, especially in rural states like Iowa.
• Congress did not intend § 10501(b) to become a blanket veto over local infrastructure necessary for land productivity, absent clear and direct conflict with federal regulatory objectives.

IV. Complex Concepts Simplified

1. Preemption Under the ICC Termination Act

Preemption means that federal law overrides state law where Congress intends it. The ICC Termination Act’s preemption clause is “express,” meaning it is written directly into the statute:

“The remedies provided under this part with respect to regulation of rail transportation are exclusive and preempt the remedies provided under Federal or State law.” 49 U.S.C. § 10501(b)(2).

But this does not mean that any law affecting a railroad is void. Instead:

• Laws that try to regulate how railroads operate—where they run trains, how they build lines, what services they offer—are typically preempted.
• Laws with only an incidental impact—like general health, safety, zoning, or drainage laws that also happen to affect railroad property—are usually not preempted.

2. Categorical vs. As-Applied Preemption

• Categorical preemption applies to entire categories of state or local regulation that are inherently incompatible with the STB’s exclusive jurisdiction, such as:
  • Local permitting that can block a railroad project sanctioned by the STB; or
  • Regulation of matters like line construction or abandonment, mergers, or rates.
• As-applied preemption concerns how a specific state law is applied in a given case. Even a generally valid law can be preempted if, in a particular application, it unreasonably burdens or interferes with rail transportation.

The Iowa Supreme Court rejected categorical preemption here and found no as-applied preemption because the culvert project created only incidental effects on transportation.

3. “Managing or Governing” vs. “Incidental Effects”

Under the Franks/Griffioen test:

• A state law “manages or governs” rail transportation if it tells a railroad how to run its trains, build its lines, or handle its equipment in a way that intrudes on core operational decisions.
• An “incidental effect” exists where the law imposes some cost, inconvenience, or minor operational adjustment, but does not dictate how the railroad provides transportation in any substantial sense.

The culvert project may have required brief construction coordination and monitoring, but it did not control routing, scheduling, or the design of rail service. Hence, it was deemed incidental.

4. Jack-and-Bore Construction

Jack-and-bore is a trenchless construction technique used to install pipes under existing infrastructure (roads, railroads) without excavating from the surface:

1. A pit is excavated beside the road or track.
2. A steel casing pipe is positioned and pushed horizontally through the soil by hydraulic jacks.
3. An auger (a rotating drill) inside the pipe bores through the soil and conveys the excavated material back out through the pipe.
4. The casing and auger proceed together, keeping the newly bored hole continuously supported by the steel pipe and minimizing the risk of collapse.
5. Throughout, the surface structure (road or rail) remains in place and can remain in service, with the work being done entirely below grade.

Safety depends on keeping the auger within the casing and following proper geotechnical assessments—procedures the drainage district’s experts described in detail and the court credited.

5. Mandamus

A writ of mandamus is a court order directing a government official or body either to perform a legally required duty or to cease an action that the law forbids. It is an extraordinary remedy, not granted lightly.

Iowa Northern sought mandamus not to force the drainage district to act, but to forbid it from enforcing state drainage statutes against the railroad, based on the argument that federal law preempted those statutes. Once the court found no preemption, the legal basis for mandamus disappeared.

V. Conclusion

Iowa Northern Railway Co. v. Floyd County & Cerro Gordo County Boards of Supervisors stands as an important clarification of ICC Termination Act preemption in the context of local infrastructure that intersects with railroad rights-of-way. The Iowa Supreme Court:

• Reaffirmed that § 10501(b) does not categorically preempt Iowa’s drainage statutes;
• Applied the Franks/Griffioen test to hold that routine, well-engineered culvert installations impose only incidental effects on rail transportation and are not preempted;
• Rejected the notion that a railroad can manufacture preemption by voluntarily halting its own operations in response to a safe, routine project; and
• Aligned Iowa law with federal and STB precedent recognizing that “routine crossing disputes” remain within the traditional domain of state courts and local authorities.

In practical terms, the decision protects the ability of Iowa’s drainage districts to maintain and modernize critical agricultural infrastructure, while preserving legitimate federal oversight of genuinely operational or structural decisions central to rail transportation. It underscores that federal preemption is a shield against conflicting regulation of railroading itself—not a sword by which railroads may block ordinary, carefully designed public works that merely pass beneath their tracks.