by
Christopher Timmins
Department of Economics
Duke University

The United Stated Environmental Protection Agency’s Federal Facilities Restoration and Reuse Office seeks to ensure cleanup progress and protective cleanup solutions at the most contaminated active and legacy federal facility hazardous waste sites. Using data from 72 federal facility National Priorities List (NPL) sites combined with a panel of census tract-level information from Brown University’s Longitudinal Tract Data Base, this study measures the impacts of NPL cleanup on house values and rents. Results suggest large, positive and statistically significant impacts when a federal facility site is deleted from the NPL, with particularly large impacts at the lower-end of the within-tract house value and rent distributions. Under certain specifications, achieving pre-deletion NPL milestones also yields positive impacts. 

NOTE: This is a working document that is being distributed for purposes of information and discussion while they undergo the peer review process at academic journals. Any opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

• Measuring the Value of Cleanup at Federal Facility National Priorities List Sites (PDF)(52 pp, 1 MB, October 30, 2017)