Superfund Case Highlights the Important Role of Property Rights in Discouraging Harmful Pollution

“Secure property rights discourage environmental damage by forcing would-be polluters to internalize the harms imposed on neighboring property owners. And where this incentive isn’t heeded, property rights enable anyone whose property is damaged by another to demand that property be restored. Where property rights are insecure, these incentives are weakened, leading to worse environmental outcomes.

Nothing in the Property Owners’ claim for restoration damages “stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment of congressional objectives as encompassed in CERCLA,” unless Congress’s objective was to condemn, in perpetuity, the private property of an individual property owner because that property happened to have been contaminated by a third party.”

Superfund Case Highlights the Important Role of Property Rights in Discouraging Harmful Pollution