State after state is rushing to bar government from “taking” private property for transfer to another private entity. It’s part of a populist firestorm triggered by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in a New London, Conn., case in which homeowners were ordered out of their houses in order to make way for a city-ordered redevelopment scheme.

But this could be only the opening shot. Tempers also are growing short over the use of “regulatory takings” – government-imposed rules that deprive owners of the full use of their property without compensation. Such takings, which amount to eminent domain by the back door, were in the spotlight at the Supreme Court last week, where oral argument took place on a pair of cases emanating from Michigan.

The first involves a Midland developer, John Rapanos, who has been fined millions of dollars for filling in three parcels of property alleged to contain wetlands. The second involves developers June and Keith Carabell, who were prevented from building a 112-unit condominium complex in suburban Detroit after regulators determined it might jeopardize the “navigable waters” of the United States.

But the Carabell development is more than a mile from any recognizable navigable water. In the Rapanos case, navigable water is at least 20 miles away. With the addition of Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito, observers are betting that the Supreme Court may be even less sympathetic to the argument that any trickle of water amounts to a “navigable” river.

Even the politicians are starting to get the message. The House of Representatives recently passed a bill making it tougher to use the Endangered Species Act to clamp land use restrictions on ranchers, farmers and others who just happen to be hosts to a supposedly threatened species. The bill may not survive in the Senate, but it reflects outrage at how a relatively uncontroversial law has been used to undermine the Fifth Amendment’s ban on takings without just compensation.

And in another sign of the times, the Oregon Supreme Court last week upheld a 2004 referendum that requires the state to compensate landowners for the value of their land lost due to a regulatory taking. Critics complain the Oregon rule would be too expensive, but that’s precisely the point. Aside from the issue of citizens’ basic rights, it would force politicians to consider costs as well as benefits when they seek to posture as the guardian of the environment at other people’s expense.

“Too expensive” is a way of saying that bureaucrats don’t think they can coax the people – damn them! – into paying for their enthusiasms. If there is a good reason for a regulatory taking, at least government should be willing to pay for it.

The merits of some of the anti-eminent domain laws now pushing to the fore can be debated. The Michigan legislature, for example, overwhelmingly approved a November ballot asking voters to limit the use of eminent domain and requiring compensation equal to 125 percent of fair market value even when the power is used for legitimate purposes. Critics will no doubt argue that this will simply drive up the cost of legitimate public projects.

But this is just the sort of backlash government can expect when it has ridden roughshod over property rights for so long. Societies in which property rights are endangered or nonexistent tend to be poor societies – and poor societies tend to be badly polluted societies. True environmentalists should be working with property rights rather than trying to evade them.

Mr. Bray is a Detroit News columnist.