Environmental Impairment Liability is a genre of policies dedicated to insuring one or more locations of a company against unknown, and possibly known, pollution conditions. The policy can apply to a large range of properties - from high hazard sites such as waste treatment facilities to more innocuous properties such as shopping malls or apartment buildings.

The standard marketplace offers Environmental Impairment Liability policies with a varying array of coverage options. The most common, or standard, coverage's provided include the following:

Coverage for Bodily Injury & Property Damage Claims
Pollution can harm both persons and their property. This coverage section pays for damages sustained by parties other than the insured for property damage and bodily injury caused by pollution for which the insured is liable. Damages may be personal injury damages such as pain and suffering, including mental anguish, and medical costs sustained to treat such illness, Or, damages may be costs incurred to replace or repair another’s property damage resulting from a pollution incident.

Coverage for Clean Up Costs
This policy pays for the costs an insured business must incur to address contamination and comply with environmental laws – whether the pollution was just released or was latent and just discovered. Costs such as investigation, removal, treatment and monitoring of pollution conditions are insured.

Legal Defense Expense
This coverage section pays for the insured business’ legal costs incurred as a result of defending or settling a liability dispute for pollution whether claims are made by private third parties or the government. Insured costs include attorney fees; expert and witness fees; court costs, charges and expenses; costs of bonds to release attachments; costs of appeal bonds; and pre and post judgment interest.

Some other common characteristics of these policies include:

"Claims-Made"
The trigger for coverage (either a claim or an event) must occur while the policy is in force.

Multi-year terms
Policies may be annual or pre-paid multi-year terms up to 10 years or more.

• Applies to pollution affecting the insured property – both on-site and off-site.
• Applies to pollution released during or before the policy is purchased.
• Can apply to known pollution conditions if disclosed during the application process.

Specialty Coverage's
Besides the basic policy forms, other specialty coverage's are available to tailor a policy to specific loss exposures you wish to insure.

• Business Interruption and Extra Expense
• Development Delay Soft Cost Loss
• Property Value Diminution
• Contingent Transportation
• Non Owned Disposal Sites
• Underground Storage Tanks