This property has a documented history as a dry cleaning facility going back to 1926. 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 CVOC contamination driving cleanup at this site originated from dry cleaning operations that ran from 1954 through 1967, and the service-station USTs in operation from the 1920s onward also predate 1986 by decades — the period when occurrence-based Commercial General Liability policies carried no effective pollution exclusion. Carriers who issued CGL coverage to operators during those pre-1986 windows wrote policies designed to cover exactly this kind of slow, subsurface release, whether from solvent-based dry cleaning machinery or leaking underground tanks. The documented remediation expenditures here — tank and equipment removals, soil excavation, waste disposal, and multi-year groundwater and vapor monitoring — represent costs that historical carriers may be obligated to fund.

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.