Source: http://www.ledger-enquirer.com, January 25, 2014 By: Mike Owen For half a century, toxic and combustible materials have been stored in a couple of dozen storage tanks on the banks of the Chattahoochee River. The tank farm — located near popular venues such as the National Civil War Naval Museum, the South Commons softball complex, A.J. […]

Source: http://www.mlive.com, January 25, 2014 By: John S. Hausman The former Zephyr Oil site is finally on the verge of getting cleaned up after decades of petroleum pollution followed by more decades of snail’s-pace contaminant control. It’s been a long time coming. A vital first step – long needed, never attempted – has finally been […]

Source: http://www.lexology.com, January 20, 2014 By: Carl A. Salisbury, Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP Construction projects are always the subject of contracts among owners and contractors. Does an exclusion in the standard Comprehensive General Liability insurance policy that precludes coverage for “liabilities assumed under contract” apply to construction contracts? According to a recent, and long-awaited, decision […]

Source: Legal Monitor Worldwide, January 23, 2014 Posted on: http://fpn.advisen.com One of the largest environmental disasters in recent American history happened three days before Christmas in 2008, when more than 1 billion gallons of coal ash slurry spilled from a coal plant in Tennessee into a nearby river. The Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) plant at […]

Source: Register-Herald (Beckley, WV), January 23, 2014 Posted on: http://fpn.advisen.com Each day, it seems a new chapter is written in the story of Freedom Industries and its leak into the Elk River that tainted water for about 300,000 West Virginians. On Tuesday, Freedom President Gary Southern told state officials that 300 gallons of a second […]

Source: Dow Jones News Service, January 21, 2014 Posted on: http://envfpn.advisen.com Energy and pipeline companies like to point out they use high-tech sensors and remote-monitoring systems to automatically alert engineers when a pipeline starts to leak oil. However, most leaks usually aren’t discovered that way, according to a review of four years of liquid pipeline […]

Read here about a settlement that has been reached in a Georgia fish kill lawsuit.

Source: http://www.lexology.com, January 21, 2014 By: Karl Chang and Ray Hsu, Tsar & Tsai Recently the public has learned that some manufacturers in Taiwan were suspected of having discharged waste water containing hazardous substances into rivers and the ocean, polluting the water in the nearby vicinity and harming the irrigation systems of farmlands downstream.  It […]

Source: http://www.insurancejournal.com, January 21, 2014 A Spartanburg, South Carolina neighborhood is suing a chemical plant, saying pollution has caused dozens of cancer cases. The lawsuit filed last week in federal court accuses a Hoechst Celanese polyester manufacturing plant of polluting groundwater and streams around the plant for dozens of years. The lawsuit was filed on […]

Source: http://www.lexology.com, January 15, 2014] By: Jake P. Skaggs, Cozen O’Connor Energy production in the United States is at an all-time high. In 2013, an average of 7.5 million barrels of oil were pumped every day, which bested the previous production record (2012) by one million barrels. Domestic oil production has increased every year from […]

Source: http://www.lexology.com, January 17, 2014 By: T. David Higgins, Jr., Cozen O’Connor Following the January 9 leak of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (MCHM) into the Elk River from Freedom Industries’ storage facility in Charleston, W.Va., the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s Division of Water and Waste Management issued a “Cease Operations Order” to Freedom Industries Etowah […]

Source: http://www.propertycasualty360.com, January 21, 2014 By: Phil Gusman Insurers may be underestimating their exposure to a coming “third wave of asbestos liabilities” by relying on outdated assumptions and not accounting for factors such as longer life expectancy and advances in medical knowledge, a research firm says. In a January briefing, Assured Research, a research and […]