News
GREEN SCENE: Cleaning Up NYC
April 21, 2010
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| Did you know there are over 7.6k acres of brownfields in NYC? That's eight Central Parks. And the City is fostering redevelopment of these sites with the first local brownfield cleaning program, a process usually overseen by the state, said Mark McIntyre (right), general counsel for the NYC Office of Environmental Remediation yesterday at a NYCREW breakfast on environmental risk management. Joining him, from his right: Wells Fargo Insurance Services national environmental practice leader Glynis Priester, Cole Schotz partner Douglas Eilender, Wells Fargo's Christine Chipurnoi, and NYCREW prez Sharon Khurdan. |
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| The goal of the program, which is under the PlaNYC 2030, is to clean up all the dirty properties correctly over the next 20 years, Mark says. There are plenty of liabilities associated with cleaning up properties, and current owners and operators can be stuck holding the bag, says Doug. Defenses are available if you do your due diligence ahead of time—you don't want to spend $1M on a property, only to do $2M worth of cleanup. There are also environmental insurance options, such as the pollution legal liability and contractors pollution liability policies, adds Glynis. Because of the greening movement, more insurance providers have entered the market in the past year, bringing prices down dramatically and adding more capacity, she says. |
