Land-use harms regularly cross property boundaries

Evidence

To give weight to such abstractions, Sax and Large cited a number of examples of land uses with effects outside the bounds of ownership. When a coal company strip-mined a steep hillside, a piece of land downslope might begin to erode or a nearby stream might begin to silt up. When a developer filled a wetland to build housing, fisheries might suffer, floods might do greater damage, and waterways might become more polluted. When a farmer used powerful pesticides, birds might fail to reproduce hundreds of miles away. No piece of property was an island. — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 947

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to ecology courses teaching interconnectedness — each concrete example (erosion, wetland fill, pesticide drift) is a mechanism-level instance of externalities. — connects to: Erosion and drainage threaten plover habitat, foreshadowing human harm from the same — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 136; Property law’s boundary-invasion frame cannot address external pollution threats to federal lands — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 792; Ecological awareness made traditional property boundaries legally untenable — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 946 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Environmental conflict arises when official extraction-driven landscapes override vernacular community maps #exemplifies (0.85) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 50
• Class and unequal political power also drive where environmental harms land #expands (0.75) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 209