What’s the dirt on soil and water elections?

The most obscure race in this historic election is not for a seat on the bench or a local school board. It’s the vote for soil and water conservation district supervisors.

Even the League of Women Voters of Georgia, a nonpartisan political organization that educates voters, overlooked the races in their voting guides for all but one of the five district elections in metro Atlanta.

“It’s frustrating because it is so obscure,” said LWVGA Executive Director Polly McKinney. “We like to give people information that they can’t find anywhere else… Unfortunately, we all missed this race.”

McKinney said their usual source of information — county registrar offices — did not include the district supervisors election on Web sites and other materials they checked. On Gwinnett County’s Web site, for example, the race was left off the list of “Offices up for Election in 2008.”

In metro Atlanta, the races in DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties are contested. District supervisors are running unopposed in Clayton and Cobb counties.

Georgia’s soil and water conservation districts were created in 1937 as part of a national effort to reverse severe erosion caused by poor farming practices. In metro Atlanta, the unpaid positions have evolved into water pollution watchdogs.

Across the state, there are 40 conservation districts. Most counties in metro Atlanta have their own district represented by five supervisors, three of whom are elected and two appointed by the district and the Georgia Soil and Water Conservation Commission. The elected supervisors serve four-year terms; the appointed supervisors serve for two years.

Following are candidates for the contested races. Incumbents are indicated by (I).

• DeKalb County, vote for two:

William D. Denton of Decatur, 46, a self-employed gardener, (I);

Dell F. MacGregor of Atlanta, 63, a real estate agent and volunteer with various environmental organizations, (I);

Marc Adam Rubenstein of Decatur, 31, no other information available.

• Gwinnett County, vote for one:

Lawrence K. Kaiser of Grayson, 49, owner of Collaborative Infrastructure Services Inc., a civil engineering consulting firm;

Ellis Lamme of Buford, 60, a retired planner from an engineering and surveying company, (I);

Chuck Warbington of Dacula, 37, executive director of the Gwinnett Village Community Improvement District.

• Fulton County, vote for two:

James “Wilson” Borden of Milton, 38, chief executive officer of The Erosion Company, a Southeast environmental remediation firm, and a partner in 5 Paces Inn, a Buckhead bar;

Lovick C. Evans of Roswell, 49, civil engineer and owner of LCE Engineers in Roswell, and a partner in a subdivision development near Augusta;

Preston D. Mason of Atlanta, 57, owner of Native Grounds Property Management, a landscape company, (I);

Alan O. Toney of Sandy Springs, 62, credit manager for wholesale office supplier S.P. Richards Co., (I).