Contaminated land policy is a key concern of governments and policy makers across the globe, yet discussion has traditionally focused on the particular experience of the United States. This major new book develops a framework for assessing laws and regulations regarding contaminated land and polluted properties, their clean up and reuse, and the assignment of costs and responsibilities for reclamation.In Contaminated Land, the authors, a European and two Americans, lay out a framework for cross- national comparisons of policy contexts as well as ways of examining the outcomes of different approaches to contaminated land and systematically compare approaches to this issue in both the EU and US. The use of this framework leads to a reassessment of specific policies, such as the polluter pays principle, which may be more successful in the EU than it has been in the US, and subsidiarity which, while problematic in Europe, may hold promise in a US application. Specific issues discussed include the nature and extent of the contaminated land problem, legal implications, regulation in the US, the 1980 Comprehensive Environmental Liability, Compensation and Reclamation Act, European experience and EU environmental policy, integrated comparative analysis and some lessons for the future.

Contaminated Land offers valuable insights on policy responses to the problem of badly polluted land from the perspectives of planning, economics and sociology. In particular, this volume offers frameworks for comparison of different national settings to help determine the preferred and most promising approaches to contaminated land in any social, economic and legal policy context.