[jart]

Could you give me three examples of what you're talking about? Are you saying like someone owns a coal mine and destroys the coal because they dug it up and sold it? Or do you mean more like they blew up the mountain to get the coal, to save money, so now the mountainside is less picturesque?

[tshaddox]

How about Superfund sites, where the owners didn’t just remove valuable resources, but actively added and then left behind hazardous materials which are now the responsibility of the taxpayer?

[jart]

I'm not sure what can be done when land is worth less than the cost of cleaning it. I'm sure technology will be available in the future that makes it economical. Especially as land grows more scarce.

[tshaddox]

> I'm not sure what can be done when land is worth less than the cost of cleaning it.

Financial and legal liability for the people responsible.

[jart]

What for making a mess on their land? Why does the government care? Probably because the government seized their land after they stopped paying taxes. So you want to punish them for not cleaning up the land that the government seized?

[PaulDavisThe1st]

1. the forests. I know most about the ones in the pacific northwest. wherever there has been private ownership (and sometimes where there has not) by a corporate entity, the forest productivity has declined (sometimes to zero)

2. mining. The owners care only about what's in the ground, not what's above it, and so there are repeated cases of them poisoning waterways and the rest of whatever is downstream because they actually have no incentive to preserve the land itself. [ Note: this really covers multiple resource extraction industries, but I'll leave it as just one example for now ]

3. topsoil. Farms across the country have been losing topsoil for more than a century. Despite the long term implications of this being acknowledged by everyone involved, practices to stop it from happening are limited, and generally constrainted to non-corporate, non-vertically-integrated farmers.