This property has a documented history as a landfill predating 1986. 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 waste disposal activities at this OxyChem site that gave rise to the contamination predate the 1986 threshold — the Consent Order issued in 1987 confirms that regulators had already identified and formalized the environmental liability from those prior operations before the pollution-exclusion era took hold. Occurrence-based CGL policies in force during OxyChem's disposal operations had no effective pollution exclusion and remain enforceable against historical carriers today. The documented remediation costs — waste excavation, cap installation, and more than three decades of groundwater monitoring — represent exactly the kind of long-tail environmental obligation those pre-1986 policies were written to cover, and with active O&M and monitoring still underway, future expenditures remain in play as well.

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.