SWAPE was retained to assist outside legal counsel for an insurance carrier obligated to defend a chemical supply company, who leased an industrial property in Indianapolis for several years during the 1970s. The company distributed chemicals, including chlorinated solvents, which were found in soils, soil vapor, and groundwater beneath the site and migrating off-site into a nearby residential neighborhood.  The Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) required remedial investigations at the site and costs of cleanup were likely to reach several million dollars.

Prior to occupying the site by the insured chemical supply company, the site was historically developed as a bulk petroleum plant by Standard Oil in the late 1920s.  Standard used the site until the late 1940s, at which time the plant was occupied by Pure Oil Company.  These oil companies operated received petroleum products by rail and also operated a small terminal for distributing products to customers by tank truck and in drums.  Smaller containers of petroleum products were also blended and packaged on-site and distributed to customers in the region.  These operations were believed to have caused extensive contamination of the site by a variety of mixtures of petroleum hydrocarbons.

Counsel asked Rob Hesse, P.G. of SWAPE to prepare a report describing the historical operations of the two former oil companies at the site and to demonstrate how operations of these bulk petroleum businesses had caused contamination of the site. The goal of this exercise was to provide Counsel with ammunition to negotiate a settlement with the successor oil companies to pay a portion of the site cleanup costs.  However, only a very limited number of historical documents describing the former bulk petroleum plant operations were available.

For this assignment, Mr. Hesse utilized two historical plot plans of the site to develop a retroactive site assessment and pollution history report. This report provided detailed descriptions of various operations areas at the site, the petroleum products present, handling practices, and potential for releases. This work was based on extensive literature from historical oil industry publications and photographic archives. In addition, the entire IDEM case file was reviewed and chemical analytical results from many years of site investigations were used to demonstrate releases that were consistent with historical oil company operations.

As a result of this work, Counsel was able to obtain a favorable settlement with two mulitinational oil companies to assist in financing a cleanup at the site as required by IDEM.  This settlement reduced the insurance carrier’s liability and achieved the Client’s goal to bring other responsible parties to the table and avoid prolonged litigation.