Tag: waste water

  • Wastewater Treatment Plants

    What is a Pollutant? 

    Any material, substance, liquid, product, etc… which is introduced into an environment for other than its intended use / purpose.  In other words, something that ends up where it does not belong.  Fresh water, cheese, and milk have all been classified as pollutants by Insurance Carriers under various circumstances. What pollutants are impacting your operation?

    Environmental Exposures Impacting Wastewater Treatment Plants 

    May include, but are not limited to;  Forever chemicals in waste water such as PFAS, PCBs;  Stormwater runoff after land application or from treatment plant grounds;  Discharges of contaminated effluent, (resulting from a treatment process breakdown, untreatable contaminants like pharmaceuticals, excess volume from combined sewer overflows….); contaminated effluent which causes soil, surface water and/or groundwater contamination (the effects of improperly treated effluent entering a surface water body might include, natural resource damages, fish kills, harm to human health if the surface water is used for recreational purposes or contamination of drinking water supply), pump/lift station failure; backup generator failure; nuisance odor claims; leaks, ruptures, spills from underground or above ground storage tanks; storage of raw materials such as Chlorine;  improper storage of sludge causing soil or groundwater contamination;  Backflow of contents from septic tanks, grease traps and other connected structures;  No auditing of waste handling and disposal companies;  historic site conditions; lagoon failures; sewer line ruptures;…. 

    Environmental Loss examples

    1. A chlorine release at a wastewater treatment plant resulted in toxic air emissions. Area residents and businesses were evacuated, and several people were hospitalized for inhalation of fumes. Claims against the facility for bodily injury and business interruption, combined with defense costs, exceeded $460,000. 
    2. A liquid wastewater treatment plant utilized sulfuric acid in their process and stored it on-site in a 20,000-gallon aboveground storage tank. The storage tank was contained by two-foot-high, chemically sealed masonry walls. Overnight, an area high on the wall of the storage tank ruptured, releasing the sulfuric acid. The leak squirted beyond the containment walls, releasing approximately 3,000 gallons of tank contents into the soil and into an adjacent stream. Government mandated costs for clean up of on-site soils, the stream and the stream bank exceeded $1 million.   
    3. A fishing camp operated its own on-site wastewater treatment facility. Seals on the bottom of the treatment system leaked and wastewater overflowed from the top of the system. This caused numerous discharges of contaminated effluent to enter the soil and migrate off-site to neighboring businesses. The business owners had environmental testing performed on their properties, confirming that elevated levels of contaminants existed at their properties. In addition, The EPA cited the manufacturer for various discharge violations and issued an administrative order finding the manufacturer responsible for contamination of the adjacent properties. Government mandated cleanup costs exceeded $250,000. In addition, business owners filed claims against the manufacturer for property damage, business interruption and trespass of pollutants. The combined total of the civil suits exceeded $500,000. 
    4. An industrial user of a wastewater treatment plant sent a sudden surge of contaminants, often called a slug, through the plant. The slug upset the treatment process and killed off the population of microorganisms. As a result, untreated effluent was discharged into a river – a source of both drinking water and recreation. The adjacent town discovered contamination in their municipal water supplies and were forced to close their wells. The town sued the treatment plant and settled for $780,000. A local environmental group filed a class action suit (under the Clean Water Act) in the amount of $750,000 for loss of enjoyment of the stream. Additionally, the plant had to shut down temporarily to clean treatment tanks and reestablish its capabilities. 
    5. A convention taking place at a park was disrupted and forced to relocate because of the odor from a wastewater treatment plant. A suit in the amount of $100,000 was filed against the plant for loss of enjoyment and for costs to relocate the convention. 
    6. Dalton Utilities, a municipal company that provides electricity, sewage treatment, natural gas, and drinking water for the city of Dalton, Ga., has been sentenced in Northern Georgia U.S. District Court for falsifying wastewater analysis in monthly operating reports.  Dalton was fined $1 million.
    7. The city of Ketchikan, Alaska, reached a $39,000 settlement with the EPA.  The city owns and operates a wastewater treatment facility that discharges treated wastewater into the Tongass Narrows. The wastewater treatment plant is part of a sanitary sewer system that receives domestic wastewater from residential and commercial sources. The facility serves a population of approximately 8,000.  The discharge from the city’s facility exceeded the fecal coliform bacteria, copper, biochemical oxygen demand, total suspended solids, pH and total residual chlorine effluent limits on numerous occasions. 
    8. Chlorine release at a wastewater treatment plant resulted in toxic air emissions. Area residents and businesses were evacuated, and several people were hospitalized for inhalation of fumes. A total of 12 businesses were forced to shut down for the better part of a day. Bodily injury claims amounted to $70,000 and business interruption claims totaled $120,000.
    9. A wastewater treatment plant that was 25 years old had been upgraded several times over the years. Improper closure of an old clarifier and on-site surface impoundment had allowed gradual seepage into groundwater. These constituents contaminated the underlying groundwater, which was a potable water supply for the neighboring community. The costs for groundwater cleanup and emergency water supply for residents totaled $550,000.
    10. A wastewater treatment plant maintained its own sewer lines. Due to the age of the lines, several cracks had developed over the years. These cracks had continuously leaked liquid raw sewage over many years and eventually polluted a nearby stream. Residents in the area sued the treatment plant for the cost to remediate the stream as well as loss of enjoyment of the stream.  Claims exceeded $350,000.
    11. A process tank at a wastewater treatment plant malfunctioned.  The tank discharged a large volume of untreated wastewater into a nearby stream, causing damage to aquatic life.  Several residents and environmental groups filed property damage lawsuits.

    Overlooked Benefits of Environmental Liability Insurance 

    Most wastewater treatment plants operating today, lack the financial strength to self-insure their environmental liabilities.  Consideration needs to be given to the economies of scale afforded with environmental liability insurance as part of your risk transfer strategy.

    Three Overlooked Benefits of environmental liability insurance

    1. Defense Costs:  Environmental liabilities are relatively new and very litigious.  Even if you do nothing wrong you can still get named in a suit and must expense defense costs i.e. legal fees, environmental investigations 
    2. Claim Management:  All policies come with specialists to assist you in handling a claim.  Who oversees communications, public relations, emergency response, government compliance, financial management, third party claims for bodily injury, property damage, natural resource damages….?
    3. Third Party Liability:  The majority of the time the cost to clean up the environmental problem/s is far less than the associated claims that come in from third parties for bodily injury, property damage and business interruption.  You need to look at your client’s and neighbors that can be impacted if you or a sub-contractor/vendor create an environmental loss.

    Environmental Liability Insurance Coverages

    Risk transfer products for wastewater treatment plants:

    ENVIRONMENTAL IMPAIRMENT LIABILITY (EIL) 

    EIL is for wastewater treatment plants susceptible to economic loss caused by pollution that actually or allegedly originated from their operations.  Sometimes referred to as pollution legal liability this coverage is for those who own, operate, lease, or have any other insurable interest in real property and the operations. Coverage can be written in a variety of ways addressing unknown preexisting conditions or new conditions.  Coverage can include first party on-site cleanup, third party bodily injury and property damage along with business interruption and extra expense, off site cleanup costs, legal defense expenses, non-owned disposal sites, transportation and more.  EIL can be offered on multi year terms.  Sewer lines and pump/lift stations can be covered by EIL.  Most EIL policies cover above ground storage tanks.  Strong consideration should be given to first party business income and extra expense.

    CONTRACTORS POLLUTION LIABILITY 

    This coverage can be purchased to meet two specific exposures. First, contractors that perform environmental remedial / service activities (day to day plant operations, asbestos, lead, mold, soil or ground water remediation, emergency response) or land application at non-owned or leased property.  There is the standard Contractors Pollution Liability (CPL) insurance coverage for the non-environmental construction services necessary for the operation and proper maintenance of wastewater operations.  CPL protects the insured for pollution conditions they may cause or exacerbation of an existing situation while performing their covered construction services.  The loss must occur away from any premises the insured owns, rents, leases or occupies, in other words while they are performing contracting services in the field.

    TRANSPORTATION POLLUTION LIABILITY

    Generally, Business Auto or Truckers policies will exclude pollution losses arising from spills or other releases of their cargo. Transportation pollution liability affords coverage during the loading, unloading and transportation, for a spill, release or sudden upset and over turn of transported cargo.  

    UNDERGROUND STORAGE TANKS 

    Financial responsibility requirements ensure that owners and operators of underground storage tank systems can financially handle a release from an underground storage tank. The responsibility encompasses the ability to pay funds for corrective action and third-party bodily injury and property damage from non-sudden and sudden and accidental releases from a regulated underground system.  

    Vendor Insurance Coverages:

    If you contract engineering/laboratory or contracting services, you should confirm the vendor has professional liability including pollution and/or contractors pollution liability coverage.  If the vendor is a transporter refer to transportation pollution liability above.  If you use a vendor for land applications, either EIL or contractor’s pollution liability, depending upon the insurable interest where the land application is taking place.

     

  • A Rising Tide of Contaminants

    environmental Strategist, between the lines:  It may surprise you to know the vast array of contaminates our waste water treatment plants are not equipped to treat.  The untreated contaminants are then discharged into our waterways.  This article gives 40,000 foot view of what is taking place with our waterways from some of the materials / chemicals we produce along with the politics.

    By DEBORAH BLUM – SEPTEMBER 25, 2014

    Deborah Swackhamer, a professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Minnesota, decided last year to investigate the chemistry of the nearby Zumbro River. She and her colleagues were not surprised to find traces of pesticides in the water.

    Neither were they shocked to find prescription drugs ranging from antibiotics to the anti–convulsive carbamazepine. Researchers realized more than 15 years ago that pharmaceuticals – excreted by users, dumped down drains – were slipping through wastewater treatment systems.

    But though she is a leading expert in so-called emerging contaminants, Dr. Swackhamer was both surprised and dismayed by the sheer range and variety of what she found. Caffeine drifted through the river water, testament to local consumption of everything from coffee to energy drinks. There were relatively high levels of acetaminophen, the over-the-counter painkiller. Acetaminophen causes liver damage in humans at high doses; no one knows what it does to fish.

    “We don’t know what these background levels mean in terms of environmental or public health,” she said. “It’s definitely another thing that we’re going to be looking at.”

    Or, she might have said, one of many, many other things.

    The number of chemicals contaminating our environment is growing at exponential rate, scientists say. A team of researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey tracks them in American waterways, sediments, landfills and municipal sewage sludge, which is often converted into agricultural fertilizer. They’ve found steroid hormones and the antibacterial agent triclosan in sewage; the antidepressant fluoxetine (Prozac) in fish; and compounds from both birth control pills and detergents in the thin, slimy layer that forms over stones in streams.

    “We’re looking at an increasingly diverse array of organic and inorganic chemicals that may have ecosystem health effects,” said Edward Furlong, a research chemist with the U.S.G.S. office in Denver and one of the first scientists to track the spread of pharmaceutical compounds in the nation’s waterways. “Many of them are understudied and unrecognized.”

    In an essay last week in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, titled “Re-Emergence of Emerging Contaminants,” editor-in-chief Jerald L. Schnoor called attention to both the startling growth of newly registered chemical compounds and our inadequate understanding of older ones.

    The American Chemical Society, the publisher of the journal, maintains the most comprehensive national database of commercially registered chemical compounds in the country. “The growth of the list is eye-popping, with approximately 15,000 new chemicals and biological sequences registered every day,” Dr. Schnoor wrote.

    Not all of those are currently in use, he emphasized, and the majority are unlikely to be dangerous. “But, for better or worse, our commerce is producing innovative, challenging new compounds,” he wrote.

    Dr. Schnoor, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Iowa, also noted rising concern among researchers about the way older compounds are altered in the environment, sometimes taking new and more dangerous forms.

    Some research suggests that polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, are broken down by plants into even more toxic metabolites. Equally troubling, scientists are finding that while PCBs are banned, they continue to seep into the environment in unexpected ways, such as from impurities in the caulk of old school buildings.

    PCBs have long been identified as hazardous, but not every contaminant is so risky, Dr. Schnoor emphasized.

    “Out of the millions of chemical compounds that we know about, thousands have been tested and there are very few that show important health effects,” he said in an interview.

    But, he added, the development of new compounds and the increasing discovery of unexpected contaminants in the environment means that the nation desperately needs a better system for assessing and prioritizing chemical exposures.

    That includes revisiting the country’s antiquated chemical regulation and assessment regulations. The Toxic Substances Control Act went into effect in 1976, almost 40 years ago, and has not been updated since.

    The law does require the Environmental Protection Agency to maintain an inventory of registered industrial compounds that may be toxic, but it does not require advance safety testing of those materials. Of the some 84,000 compounds registered, only a fraction have ever been fully tested for health effects on humans. The data gap includes some materials, like creosote and coal tar derivatives, which are currently manufactured at rates topping a million pounds a year.

    Not surprisingly, Dr. Schnoor and other scientists want to see the act updated and transformed into a mechanism for science-based risk assessment of suspect compounds. Indeed, everyone from researchers to environmental groups to the American chemical industry agree that the law is frustratingly inadequate.

    “Our chemical safety net is more hole than net,” said Ken Cook, president of theEnvironmental Working Group, an advocacy group. The Food and Drug Administration, for instance, doesn’t regulate the environmental spread of pharmaceuticals. And the toxic substances law ignores their presence in waterways.

    “Where does that leave us in terms of scientific understanding of what drugs to regulate?” Mr. Cook said.

    Anne Womack Kolton, vice president for communications at the American Chemistry Council, an organization representing chemical manufacturers, agreed. “Think about the world 40 years ago,” she said. “It was a vastly different place. It’s common sense to revise the law and make it consistent with what we know about chemicals today.”

    The two sides don’t agree on what standards for chemical testing are needed or what kind of protective restrictions should be put in place for chemicals deemed hazardous. And they are in deep disagreement about whether a revised federal law should preempt actions taken by tough-minded states like California.

    The council argues for federal standardization as the most efficient route; environmental groups believe that such an action would weaken public protection. Legislators have so far not been able to resolve those differences. This month yet another proposed update to the act stalled in a Senate committee.

    “Congress has not sent an environmental law to the president’s desk in 18 years,” Mr. Cook said. “And in the current environment, it’s very difficult to get something through.”

    Still, Dr. Swackhamer, who recently stepped down as chair of the E.P.A.’s science advisory board, notes that despite the lack of legislation, scientists have been working toward better ways to assess the risks posed by the increasing numbers of chemicals in our lives. Some may help whittle the inventory of T.S.C.A. compounds down to a priority list that focuses on less than a thousand products.

    That’s still a daunting number of chemical unknowns. But given the tens of thousands of materials in the inventory, it’s a start.