Developed Exit Strategy®, Guaranteed Remediation with Insurance Program (GRiP®) and other Environmental Liability Risk Transfer proposals and/or implemented response actions including investigation, feasibility studies, design, construction and post-closure activities to remediate, contain and monitor a wide variety of contaminated sites and in some cases the decommissioning, abatement, demolition of coal fired power plants.
The responsibility to reach the contract endpoint (i.e., a No Further Action determination) was contractually transferred from the Owner/Potentially Responsible Party (PRP) to a Consulting Firm or Developer. While there were some exclusions and exceptions, there was no limit on the costs required to reach the endpoint and the financial risks for these liabilities was transferred from the Owner/PRP to the Consultant/Developer.
These scopes of these projects varied from single properties and one-off deals to portfolios of up to hundreds of properties and thousands of PRPs.
These projects utilized a variety of insurance products to mitigate financial risk associated with known and unknown environmental costs, but it was a challenge to get environmental insurance companies to underwrite adequate policies.
Helped pioneer the risk transfer solution market in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Helped develop and some of the first Exit Strategy® projects and the largest in 2001, the $103.5MM Waterside Generating Station decommissioning in Manhattan).
Supported other groundbreaking risk transfer solutions including the $26.7MM former Connecticut Power & Light, South Meadow Station in Hartford, CT where the environmental liabilities were assumed under the Connecticut Transfer Act and the Portland Bangor Waste Oil superfund site which had 2,900 PRPs and was featured in the Wall Street Journal in April 29, 1998.
Most recently (2017-2020), Mr. O’Mara was the Owners Engineer for Forsite Development Inc. environmental liability risk transfer of the former Consumers Energy B.C. Cobb and J.R. Whiting coal fired power plant decommissioning, demolition, remediation and redevelopment projects in Muskegon and Luna Pier Michigan, respectively.
Results:
Completed response actions for a variety of industrial and commercial properties including waste oil recycling facilities, coal fired power plants, manufactured gas plants, landfills, lagoons and impoundments; dry cleaners, automotive service and filling stations; metal working facilities, manufacturing plants and mining sites.
Contaminants addressed included petroleum products, chlorinated and non-chlorinated solvents, heavy metals including hexavalent chromium, mercury, lead, arsenic and others, gasolines, fuel oils, pesticides and insecticides, coal tars, wood preservatives, coal ash and other CCRs.
Remedies have included Closure by Removal, Closure in Place Closure (landfill capping), waste solidification/stabilization, soil vapor extraction, dual phase extractions, DPE, in-situ bioremediation including enhanced reductive dichlorination (ERD), in-situ chemical oxidation, waste recycling and beneficial reuse.
The former Consumers Energy BC Cobb and JR Whiting plants were successfully decommissioned, demolished and active remediation has been completed.
Benefits:
Clients were able to transfer the liabilities for these assets to one of the companies and eliminated millions of dollars of environmental liabilities from their balance sheets, providing cost certainty and avoiding the risk of increasing costs relating to changing regulations and undiscovered contamination.
Most of these shuttered and underutilized sites are now remediated and redeveloped and again providing tax base and job opportunities for their communities.
