I grew up in Eagan, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. Each morning on my way to school, my skyline consisted not of the Foshay Tower and U.S. Bank Stadium (highlights of Minneapolis), but rather the billowing smokestacks of Eagan’s Gopher Resource recycling plant. My elementary and middle school was less than a mile from the plant, and I often wondered what exactly was spewing out of those chimneys.
While caught in a doom scroll on Instagram last week, I came across an ad for a class-action lawsuit against Gopher Resource in Eagan. The settlement payout includes those who “lived within, attended a school within or worked within one mile of the stack of the Eagan Facility from January 1, 2000 to July 24, 2024”. I went 3/3. The settlement claims that the facility exposed me and my neighbors to “lead, cadmium, arsenic, sulfur dioxide” and other chemicals that I would rather not inhale. My exposure to these chemicals is a negative production externality; because this plant polluted the environment, I suffer the consequences.
A father whose child attended school near a different Gopher Resource plant in Florida originally filed suit. In making this decision, he opted against a Coasian resolution to this problem, settling instead for collective action and state intervention. While Coase would say this is outside of the government’s intended role, I’ll certainly enjoy the extra cash in my wallet.
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