7 - Environmental Contamination, PCBs, and Climate Change as Public Nuisance Harms

Summary

Chapter 7 narrates the development of public nuisance law in the context of environmental contamination litigation. At the outset, the description of environmental litigation notes that these cases represent the oldest and prototypical public nusiance litigation cases, because the cases are closest to an invasion of, or interference with, property rights that are the framework for historical public nuisance claims. The chapter canvasses a wide variety of environmental public nuisance claims relating to contamination of common water sources, noxious plumes emanting from factories and plants, chemical emissions contributing to climate change, oil spill contamination, waste dumps, ground water and soil contamination from various chemicals such as PCBs and MBTEs. The chapter discusses the Supreme Court decision in American Electric Power v. Connecticut (2011), holding that any asserted federal common law public nusiance claim against electric power companies was displaced by the federal Clean Air Act. The chapter contains an examination of federal displacement and preemption doctrine concerning the relationship between several federal and state laws regulating environmental concerns.