If you manage environmental issues, receiving an unexpected letter from Environmental Protection Agency or a state environmental regulator about historic contamination could be the start of a yearslong and expensive project. Whether these costs are borne by your company alone or are covered by insurance policies is a question that should be raised early with coverage counsel.
The site at issue could be one that no one has ever heard of and for which your company may have scant to no records. Your company’s involvement could have been brief and perhaps insubstantial. Some predecessor entity, which may not operate any longer, could have simply arranged for a small amount of waste to be deposited in a landfill or may have operated briefly at a site. And that activity could have been done entirely in line with the standards of the day. But none of those arguments may be enough to avoid investigating and remediating the site.
