PFAS from Airport Operations Impacts Community Drinking Water
A legacy of AFFF use threatened shutdowns and soaring costs. Historical insurance shifted the district’s outlook from uncertainty to opportunity.
Problem
The municipal water district grew alongside the regional airport. As the airport added runways and terminals the ratepayers of the district increased. Starting in the late 1960s, the airport began training with PFAS-containing Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF), discharging it directly onto the ground for next few decades. After each application, the foam migrated into soil and groundwater, eventually reaching municipal wells.
By 2018, anticipating tighter federal standards, the district tested its system for PFAS and detected elevated levels at several production wells. Without PFAS-specific treatment capacity, the district incurred significant capital costs to bring safe drinking water to their customers. The focus then shifted to long-term solutions, which required expensive upgrades to sequester and filter out the PFAS to ensure safe drinking water.
The water district pursued state and federal grants and hired a law firm to join the countrywide class action lawsuits against manufacturers.
Prior consultants and law firms attempted to locate historical insurance policies that might provide additional funding, but all searches came up empty. With tens of millions on the line, the district turned to Restorical.
Solution
Restorical approached the problem differently, rebuilding the district’s historical and insurance footprint.
Deploying our Proven Process, we focused on:
- Reconstructing operational and corporate genealogy over the past 80 years
- Correlating AFFF use, environmental releases, and occurrence-based insurance triggers
- Investigating predecessor entities and municipal naming conventions
- Mapping airport and utility interactions and regulatory history
- Mining archival and hard-to-find carrier sources beyond conventional databases
Where others hit dead ends, Restorical uncovered primary, umbrella, and excess policies.
With a comprehensive strategy in hand, the Client engaged legal counsel to review these findings and provide a legal opinion on coverage and, eventually, tender good-faith PFAS claims.
Impact
With credible policy evidence in hand, the district’s PFAS claims have now been tendered. Carriers are responding with the type of questions that indicate real engagement, like when coverage is in play.
Restorical’s unique approach and guidance transformed a looming financial threat into a path forward.
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