My private well is contaminated with 85 ppt (and my bloodstream, at 30ppt years after fixing the water supply) of PFAS because Wolverine tannery owners decided to dump ScotchGuard contaminated scraps in the swamp behind their homes.

The river through that same town, likewise, is no longer a world-class trout stream because homeowners on the stream banks fill it with nitrates and algae blooms by fertilizing their lawns. Lakes are clogged with zebra mussels because fishermen won't clean their boats and drain livewells/bilges while traveling between lakes, and the very fish they're going around to catch are down precipitously as a result of those actions. Once-productive farms? Soil's depleted. Old growth forests? Clear-cut, replaced by scrubby tangles and immature pines. The whole Great Lakes ecosystems? I give it less than a decade before invasive carp come through Chicago's unreliable electric deterrent.

The lack of radioactive sludge opportunities is unique, most other land-destroying activities are well established.

Land keeps its value because it's scarce and the growing population and growing economy keeps needing it, not because it's maintained to anything remotely like the ecological quality it once had.