There is a chemical company doing work in a small island nation in which all inhabitants share the same lake as a water supply. As luck would have it for this chemical company, they were able to purchase the land from the island's republican government.
As chance would further have it, the company is entirely owned by a dying businessman with no family or close connections, it does not matter to him whether any PR fiascos will occur due to his island operations, he will be dead by then and the business will pass down to some functionary he privately does not care about.
His plant is designed to produce the last of a kind of widget which will soon become obsolete. The market makes the most profitable move to open this factory for a period of time and then shut down. The highest earnings can also be made by taking advantage of the island's nonexistent environmental regulations.
During the plant's operation it becomes a major enviironmental risk due to toxic sludge being dumped into the lake.
What is the ethical status of the following two scenarios -
1) The government passes a law enforcing strict environmental regulations on private land that were not needed before hand
2) The government participates in crony capitalism and simply starts buying bottled water (at prices the countries poor can not afford) resulting in a group of poor poeple sabatoging the plant, maing it inoperable but killing no one.
3) The government chooses to simply nationalize the lake, resulting in the plant shutting down