Item B: Ordinance Concerning Goal 5 Natural Resources Study

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2900 112 SUPREME COURT. REPORTER 505 U.s. 1028 327, 62 L.Ed.2d 210 (1979) (prohibition on sale of eagle feathers). In the case of land, however, we think the notion pressed by the Council that title is somehow held subject to the ''implied limitation" that the State may subsequently eliminate all economically valu- able use is inconsistent with the historical compact recorded in the Takings Clause that has become part of our constitutional cul- ture.15 [8] Where "permanent physical occupa- tion" of land is concerned, we have refused to allow the government to decree it anew (without compensation), no matter how weighty the asserted "public interests" in- volved, Loretta v. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., 458 U.S., at 426, 102 S.Ct., at SI71-though we assuredly would permit the government to assert a permanent easement that was a pre-existing limitation upon the la~wner'slO29 title. Compare Scranton v. Wheeler, 179 U.S; 141, 163,21 S.Ct. 48, 57, 45 L.Ed. 126 (1900) (interests of "riparian owner in the submerged lands .,. bordering on a public navigable water" held subject to Gov- ernment's navigational servitude), with Kai- ser A.etna v. United, States, 444 U.S., at 178- 180, 100 S.Ct., at 392-393 (imposition of navi- gational servitude On marina created and rendered navigable at private expense held to constitute a taking). We believe similar 15. After accusing us of "launch[ing] a missile to kill a mouse," post, at 2904. JustiCe BLACKMUN expends a good deal of throw-weight of his own upon a noncombatant, arguing that our descrip- tion of the "understanding" of land ownership that inforIDs the Takings Clause is not supported by early American experience. That is largely true, but entirely irrelevant. The practices of the States prior to incorporation of the Takings and Just Compensation Clauses, see Chicago, B. & Q.R. Co. v. Chicago, 166 U.S. 226, 17 S.Ct. 581, 41 L.Ed. 979 (l897)-which, as Justice BLACK- MUN acknowledges, occasionally included out- right physical appropriation of land without com- pensation, see post, at 2915 -were out of accord with .any plausible interpretation of those .provi- sions. Justice BLACKMUN is. correct that early constitutional theorists did not believe the Tak- ings Clause embraced regulations of pr9perty at all, see post, at 2915, and n. 23, but even he does not suggest (explicitly, at least) that we renounce the Court's contrary conclusion in Mahon. treatment must be accorded confiscatory reg- ulations, ie., regulations that prohibit all eco- nomically beneficial use of land: Any limita- tion so severe cannot be newly legislated or decreed (without compensation), but must in- here in the title itself, in the restrictions that background principles of the State's law of property and nuisance already place upon land ownership. A law or decree with such an effect must, in other words, do no more than duplicate the result that could have been achieved in the courts-by adjacent landowners (or other uniquely affected per- sons) under the State's law of private nui- sance, or by the State under its complemen- tary power to abate nuisances that affect the public generally, or otherwise.li [9] On this analysis, the owner of a lake- bed, for example, would not be entitled to compensation when he is denied the requisite permit to engage in a landtilling operation that would have the effect of flooding others' land. Nor the corporate owner of a nuclear generating plant, when it is directed to re- move all improvements from its land upon discovery that the plant sits astride an earth- quake fault. Such regulatory action may well have the effect of 'eliminating the land's only economically productive use, but it does Since the text of the Clause can be read to encompass regulatory as well as physical depri- vations (in contrast to the text originally pro- posed by Madison, see Speech Proposing Bill of Rights (June 8, 1789), in 12 J. Madison, The Papers of James Madison 201 (C. Hobson, R. Rutland, W. Rachal, & J. Sisson ed. 1979) ("No person shall be ... obliged to relinquish his property, where it may be necessary for public use, without a just compensation"), we decline to do so as well. 16. The principal "otherwise" that we have in mind is litigation absolving the State (or private parties) of liability for the destruction of "real and personal property, in cases of actual necessi- ty, to prevent the spreading of a fire" or to forestall other. grave, threats to the lives and property of others. Bowditch v. Boston, 101 U.S. 16, 18-19,25 L.Ed. 980 (1880); see United States v. Pacific R., Co.. 120 U.S. 227.238-239,7 S.Ct. 490,495-496, 30 L.Ed. 634 (1887).