This property has a documented history as a industrial and manufacturing facility going back to 1893. 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.

The naphthalene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon contamination at this site is directly linked to creosote production and storage operations that concluded roughly three-quarters of a century before 1986 — the period when occurrence-based Commercial General Liability policies carried no effective pollution exclusion in Washington. That multi-decade gap between the contamination's origin and the modern cleanup obligation is exactly the scenario those historical policies were written to address. The documented remediation costs here — source-soil excavation, an active groundwater treatment system, and more than two decades of compliance monitoring under a Consent Decree — represent expenditures the historical carriers who issued CGL policies during the creosoting era may be obligated both to recover and to fund going forward.

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.