This property has a documented history as a bulk fuel distribution terminal going back to 1951. Historical insurance policies issued during those prior operations and through 1986 could fund a cleanup — and recover costs already spent.

Why Historical Insurance Policies May Be Accessible

Pre-1986 Commercial General Liability (CGL) policies were occurrence-based and did not contain an effective pollution exclusion in Washington. If contamination occurred while those policies were active, those historical insurance carriers may still have a legal obligation to fund the cleanup costs, even if the business closed or the property changed hands.

Petroleum releases at this facility trace to fuel storage and distribution operations that ran for decades before 1986, with documented contamination events between 1979 and 1985 alone. Occurrence-based CGL policies issued to the operators during that pre-1986 window carried no effective pollution exclusion under Washington law and remain enforceable. The scale of documented remediation costs — tank and transformer removal, large-volume product recovery, vapor extraction of over 1.3 million pounds of hydrocarbons, and years of monitoring — represents expenditures the historical carriers may be obligated to reimburse, with additional soil remediation still ahead.

Restorical's role is to locate viable historical policies, determine whether a successful coverage claim is possible, and assist our clients and their legal counsel to obtain insurance coverage. Restorical then manages the claim, including accounting, to ensure the cleanup is funded in a timely manner.