Category: Drycleaners

Ladies, Keep Your Eye On Your Mister

Posted on by Jeff Carnahan

And Other Separator Water Issues

Written by Steve Henshaw, P.G., President & CEO, EnviroForensics
As seen in the November 2010 issue of Cleaner & Launderer

Cleaning and purifying dry cleaning solvents for reuse has been around since the beginning of the dry cleaning industry.  Historically, solvents were considered inexpensive, so the degree to which they were reclaimed was considerably less than it is today.  The rule of thumb used to be a 1 to 5 loss/recovery ratio.  That means that 1 part solvent was lost for every 5 parts recycled.  Today that ratio is much, much lower with some dry cleaners telling me they lose only 1 part of perchlorotheylene (perc) for every 20 parts recycled. 

While the dry cleaning machines, now in what’s considered their 5th and 6th generation, are much better designed and considered safer for the environment, the management of separator water continues to pose environmental concerns.  Separator water is generated during the distillation and solvent recovery process.  Vapors from the distillation process are condensed into a mixture of solvent and water.  The solvent is typically recoverd from the mixture by gravity in the water separator.  The remaining water in the separator has dissolved solvents in it and if the solvent being used is perc, the separator water will more likely than not be considered a hazardous waste. Continue reading “Ladies, Keep Your Eye On Your Mister”

What Drives an Environmental Cleanup?

Posted on by Jeff Carnahan

Written by Stephen Henshaw, P.G., President and CEO, EnviroForensics
As seen in the August 2010 issue of Cleaner & Launderer

PDF Version

I frequently get calls from dry cleaners asking for advice and one of the common questions is, “How much is it going to cost to cleanup my site?” Knowing that my dry cleaner friend is looking for an answer better than “depends” and realizing that it is impossible to give him an accurate cost without knowing a lot more about the site conditions, I find myself walking a bit of a tightrope. Environmental cleanups are driven by several factors, but the primary factor is risk. The risk is whether the chemical release could impact the environmental that supports animal life, as an example, wetlands, creeks, streams, lakes and oceans.

Of course, in stating these primary risk factors, one cannot ignore property damage immediately below the cleaners or at the adjacent properties where contamination has migrated. And last but not least, a regulatory agency can bring a third party claim against a dry cleaner to cleanup contamination to the lowest of levels, but in general the primary factors presented apply.

So, how can one determine whether or not a threat exists or is present to human health and/or the environment? We have to determine if the release has reached either people or the environment. Continue reading “What Drives an Environmental Cleanup?”

Can PERC Releases Be Age Dated and Fingerprinted?

Posted on by Jeff Carnahan

Written by Stephen Henshaw, P.G., President and CEO, EnviroForensics
As seen in the May 2010 issue of Cleaner & Launderer

PDF Version

For years parties responsible for the costs associated with environmental investigations and cleanups of Perc contamination have been trying to determine when Perc releases have occurred.  This topic has important ramifications when sites have had a series of dry cleaning operations over time, when different insurance carriers insured dry cleaners and property owners, and when several dry cleaning releases have comingled together from different dry cleaning locations.

So, for the past 15 to 20 years, scientists like Dr. Konrad Banaszak with EnviroForensics, have been trying to figure out how to age date PERC releases.  So, can Perc releases be accurately age dated?  The answer is yes, no and maybe.  Continue reading “Can PERC Releases Be Age Dated and Fingerprinted?”

How Do Changing Laws Affect Dry Cleaners?

Posted on by Jeff Carnahan

Written by Stephen Henshaw, P.G., CEO of EnviroForensics
As seen in Cleaner & Launderer

Over the years, I’ve written about the opportunity to utilize historical Comprehensive General Liability (CGL) insurance policies to assist in funding legal work, site investigation activities and remediation in response to claims made by environmental agencies and landlords. When I first started meeting with dry cleaners to discuss the notion that historical insurance policies were valuable assets, most business owners wouldn’t acknowledge that they had accidental spills of cleaning solvents which contaminated or may have contaminated their site. Early on, the regulatory agencies were not aggressively focusing on the dry cleaning industry as a central theme in regional and local groundwater pollution problems. The agencies were not trying to phase out PERC, and indoor vapor intrusion from dry cleaning solvents was more of a hypothetical discussion than a regulated action.

Today, the wheels continue to turn as agencies have tightened their grip on phasing out PERC and are evaluating potential risks to residences and workers where solvents have been detected in soil gas and indoor air. Court decisions involving complex environmental liability matters continue to change. Where certain state and federal courts once construed the law to allow dry cleaners to use general liability insurance policies to defend against environmental liability claims, those rulings are today being distinguished so as to reduce their precedential authority. While the occasional state court decision favors the policyholder, the rulings now usually favor the insurer’s argument that it has no duty to defend, or if they do, they are limited as to the time period in which they insured the business.

Also, when you consider the current state of the insurance industry, which is constricting by merger and acquisition, plus some disturbing findings regarding the solvency of some of the carriers, it becomes apparent that dry cleaners need to think proactively about how to address the problem of long-tail environmental liability.

In March 2010, an article in Business Insurance forecast the liquidation of Kemper Insurance Company within the next few months. When Kemper officially goes into a state-managed run-off, there will be a small window of time in which policyholders will be allowed to file claims to qualify for cents on the dollar in coverage. Following the end of this run-off period, there will be no coverage under these policies. They will effectively have gone from valuable to valueless in a matter of months.

What will this mean for dry cleaners? Kemper Insurance Company’s lead insurance unit, Lumbermen’s Mutual Casualty Company, marketed its special multi-peril and general liability insurance policies to the dry cleaning industry quite successfully in the 1970s and 1980s. Lumbermen’s Mutual policies were sponsored by dry cleaning associations in various states. Some state dry cleaners associations like the former California Fabricare Institute even purchased a master policy from Lumbermens Mutual for its members and then issued subscriptions to individual dry cleaners. If those dry cleaners covered under these policies wait until their landlords or neighboring landowners discover groundwater contamination traceable to their former operations, it will likely be too late for them to use these historical insurance policies to obtain defense against these claims. They will be required to pay legal fees, and environmental engineering costs out of their own pockets.

Self-preservation requires that dry cleaners act now to pull together their historical insurance policies; that they act now to determine whether contamination in soil or groundwater exists on their business properties. This dangerous environment also demands that they associate themselves with environmental consultants with knowledge of these matters, professionals who know how to guide and assist them in using all the resources at their disposal now to prevent catastrophes from overwhelming, even bankrupting their businesses.

Vapor Intrusion and Indoor Air Sampling Expensive Testing – Make Sure It’s Done Correctly

Posted on by Jeff Carnahan

Written by Stephen Henshaw, P.G., President and CEO, EnviroForensics

As seen in the March 2010 issue Western Cleaner and Launderer.

PDF Version

Vapor Intrusion, or VI, is probably the hottest topic among regulators these days.  Vapor intrusion may be best described as the contamination of indoor breathing air as a result of being in proximity to soil or groundwater releases of hazardous chemicals.  Generally speaking, volatile organic compounds that have been released or spilled into the subsurface display a preference to evaporate into air spaces, or voids, in the soils.  These vapors can then disperse and travel through the soils to nearby buildings.  Contaminated soil vapors are most likely to travel along utility corridors where backfill material, such as sand, typically has more air spaces than the surrounding soils that were laid down naturally by Mother Nature.  Once the vapors travel through a utility corridor, they may migrate into the building through concrete block basement walls, floor drains, drainage sumps or cracks in the floor. Continue reading “Vapor Intrusion and Indoor Air Sampling Expensive Testing – Make Sure It’s Done Correctly”