Posted: 02/20/2006
Supreme Court Cases Highlight Importance Of Ownership Society
"Stop Giving Property Owners Perverse Incentives," says NCPA E-Team Scholar
DALLAS (February 20, 2006) - The degradation of property rights by government have given landowners perverse incentives to damage the environment, according to a recent study by the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA). The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments this week on key wetland cases - Rapanos v. United States and Carabell v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers - that show these perverse incentives in action.
"If lands are valuable to the public in their natural state, then the public should bear the cost involved in leaving them undeveloped, not the property owner," said NCPA Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett, who authored the study. "These cases show that stripping away landowner rights without compensation can contribute to, rather than prevent, environmental damage."
Section 404 of the Clean Water Act requires landowners to obtain permits from the Army Corps of Engineers before discharging fill material into wetlands adjacent to navigable bodies of water and their tributaries. Congress passed the legislation to help curb industrial polluting of federally protected waters.
In Rapanos v. United States, the defendant attempted to obtain the permit to fill in wetlands located on his property to make the land conducive to development. The Corps denied his permit, but provided no compensation for the value forgone due to the restriction. As a result, Rapanos filled the land anyway.
"It is time for Congress to revisit the issue, keeping in mind that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar," said Dr. Burnett. "The current approach produces more acrimony and less environmental protection - a lose/lose situation."