Hazardous Waste and Home Values: An Analysis of Treatment and Disposal Sites in the United States

Dennis Guignet and Christoph Nolte

Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, 2024, vol. 11, issue 2, 487 - 521

Abstract: There are 2,389 treatment, storage, and disposal facilities (TSDFs) of hazardous waste in the contiguous United States. We frame two sets of difference-in-differences and triple differences quasi-experiments that exploit the spatial and temporal variation in contamination and cleanup events and estimate hedonic price regressions using a sample of 9.7 million home transactions from 2000–2018. The discovery of contamination and subsequent investigation is associated with up to a 5% depreciation in the value of homes within 750 meters of a TSDF, but the evidence is mixed. In contrast, we find strong evidence that the completion of cleanup leads to an average 6%–7% appreciation. A total capitalization of $295 million can be attributed to the 195 TSDFs that were remediated since the inception of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. We estimate that the completion of cleanup yields an average lower-bound, ex post benefit of about $14,000 per household.

Date: 2024
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