This property has a documented history as a industrial and manufacturing facility going back to 1956. Historical insurance policies issued during those prior operations and through 1986 could recover the cleanup costs already paid.
Borden Chemical manufactured phenol-formaldehyde and urea-formaldehyde resins at this Kent property from 1956 until the facility was demolished in Fall 2001, operating 49 aboveground storage tanks during its decades of production. Site investigations — including a 1992 Site Hazard Assessment and a 1993 Washington Department of Health assessment — identified widespread groundwater contamination including phenolic compounds, formaldehyde, methanol, halogenated organics, metals including arsenic, and petroleum products, with concentrations exceeding MTCA cleanup levels. Ten monitoring wells tracked groundwater conditions from 1987 through 2000, and the site achieved No Further Action status following completion of a closure report under the Voluntary Cleanup Program. That history could support an insurance cost recovery claim against carriers who issued insurance policies 40+ years ago.
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.
Resin manufacturing operations at this facility ran continuously from 1956 through the mid-1980s and beyond — thirty years of industrial chemical handling predating the 1986 shift from occurrence-based to claims-made CGL policies. The contamination documented in groundwater beneath the property — phenolics, formaldehyde, solvents, metals — is consistent with decades of resin production, waste-lagoon disposal, and subsurface releases from underground piping that accumulated over those years of operation. Historical carriers who wrote occurrence-based CGL policies covering Borden Chemical during that pre-1986 window may bear obligations for the remediation costs incurred to bring this site to closure.
Restorical's role is to locate viable historical policies, determine whether a successful cost recovery claim is possible, and assist our clients and their legal counsel to obtain insurance coverage for costs already incurred. Restorical's forensic accounting team works to re-establish and document past cleanup expenditures, ensuring the strongest possible basis for recovery.
Recovering Costs from an Older Cleanup
If this site reached No Further Action years ago, the original cleanup expenditures may be difficult to reconstruct. Restorical's forensic accounting team specializes in re-establishing and documenting past cleanup costs — even decades later — to build the strongest possible basis for an insurance recovery claim.
What We Look For
- Historical insurance policies (pre-1986)
- Policy numbers, carrier names, and coverage periods
- Connection between contamination timing and policy period
- Evidence linking cleanup obligation to insured activity
What We Deliver
- Historical Coverage Chart
- Trigger Analysis & Property/Policy Nexus
- Coverage strategy with recommendations
- Insurance funding for your remediation
- Claims Management & Forensic Accounting
The Restorical Proven Process
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Contact UsThis analysis is preliminary and based on publicly available records. Restorical Research is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice.