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environmental Strategist, between the lines: Michigan alone has 9,000 leaking underground storage tanks that we know about but do not have the money to clean them up. This means in Michigan at a minimum, we have 9,000 locations that can cause vapor intrusion just from tanks. How many more don’t we know about? The questions…

environmental Strategist, between the lines: Vapor intrusion is one of the environmental hot topics we discuss with our agency network because it can impact any property owner. A few years ago ASTM, the society that establishes the guidelines for Phase I and Phase II environmental reports, came out with ASTM 2600 to address vapor intrusion…

environmental Strategist, between the lines: Brownfields for insurance agents are like annuities. Let me expand on this, first you help them with the pollution insurance for financial assurance (refer to attached document) and once they complete the Brownfield, there is a need for P&C insurance products to protect the new development. A majority of cities…

Policy makers, environmentalists like to congratulate themselves on the “victory” over acid rain. As this American success story is usually told, acid rain’s effects were addressed by a 1990 update to the Clean Air Act that created a cap-and-trade system focused on sulfur dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. Since the system was implemented, sulfur…

Nearly 40 years after the first Earth Day, this is irony: The United States has reduced the manmade pollutants that left its waterways dead, discolored and occasionally flammable. But now, it has managed to smother the same waters with the most natural stuff in the world. Animal manure, a byproduct as old as agriculture, has…

By Steven J. Smith, AVP Underwriting Given the wide variety of meats, processed foods and produce distributed across the United States, cooling and preserving these consumables at the point of origin and shipping is paramount for businesses. While cold storage facilities are becoming more common, the environmental exposures related to these facilities are not. Cold…

environmental Strategist, between the lines: While the crime listed below is a common everyday occurrence, it is the un-suspecting that need to understand the horizontal and vertical environmental liabilities created by shady / reactive storage tank owners. In the state of Michigan alone we have 9,000 known leaking underground Storage Tanks (UST’s) where there is…

environmental Strategist, between the lines: In case you missed this article in the recent issue of Risk and Insurance I wanted to make sure you had a chance to review this. Any businesses that can impact water are going to be under more scrutiny, especially agricultural accounts. Toxic Water: Pollution and Scarcity Flow Together Fracking,…

Courtesy of Intelex Technologies Inc. Thinking of bringing your business to a more sustainable place? The best starting place for any business leader to embrace sustainability is to shift away from looking at sustainability in terms of how much it will cost, and towards assessing the returns it will generate. Consider the phenomenon known as…

environmental Strategist, between the lines: For several years we have been sharing with you information on vapor intrusion (ASTM 2600) and what a serious issue it can be for any property owner. As the article below points out, the EPA also feels vapor intrusion is a serious enough liability that it deserves to get Superfund…