No operation is invulnerable to environmental risks! Learn about environmental risks and how we can provide custom coverage to protect your clients from exposures they may not be aware exist in their current business operations.
We encourage you to take advantage of these helpful educational tools to discover the right coverage solutions for your clients!
Discover tools and insights that make it easier to navigate environmental risks while delivering stronger outcomes for your clients.
What type of coverage do your clients need?
Site coverage (often called Site Pollution Liability or Premises Pollution Liability) is a specialized insurance policy designed to protect businesses from environmental risks tied to a particular property or facility.
Scope of Coverage:
- On-site pollution events: Covers contamination that originates at the insured location
- Third-party liability: Protects against claims for bodily injury, property damage, or business interruption caused by pollution
- Cleanup costs: Protects against claims for bodily injury, property damage, or business interruption caused by pollution
Policy Structure:
- Where coverage applies: Limited to the scheduled site(s) listed in the policy
- What coverage includes: Cleanup, legal defense, damages, and sometimes coverage for non-owned disposal sites or transportation of waste.
- When coverage responds: Typically written on a claims-made basis, meaning coverage applies if a claim is made during the policy period, regardless of when the pollution event occurred
Who needs it?
 Environmental Facilities |  Chemical/petroleum Facilities |  Commercial Facilities |
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 Healthcare Facilities |  Industrial Facilities |  Municipalities and Utilities |
Site coverage is location-specific—each insured site is individually underwritten, and no two policies are identical. It fills gaps left by general liability insurance and it’s critical for industries with any risk of environmental exposure (nearly every industry is!). Pollution policies are tailored to safeguard against environmental liabilities to a specific property, ensuring businesses can manage cleanup, legal and third-party costs without crippling financial impact.
Contractor coverage within pollution policies protects contractors against pollution-related risks that arise from their operations at job sites, including cleanup costs, third-party claims, and defense expenses. It is designed to fill the gap left by general liability policies, which typically exclude pollution exposures.
Scope of Coverage:
- Third-party liability: Protection against claims for bodily injury, property damage, or environmental harm caused by pollution incidents.
- Cleanup costs: Covers expenses for remediation and regulatory compliance following spills, contamination, or improper waste disposal.
- Defense costs: Includes legal defense and related expenses tied to pollution claims.
- Emergency response: Many CPL policies include first-party coverage for immediate response costs to minimize environmental impact.
Common Uses:
 Construction Projects |  General and Specialty Trades |  Meeting contractual requirements |  Protecting against unexpected pollution exposures |
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Contractor coverage can be operation-specific, meaning it follows the contractor’s work across sites, unlike site coverage which is tied to a fixed property. Similarly to site coverage, contractor coverage fills gaps left by general liability insurance. This type of coverage is critical for all contractors, not just environmental specialists. Even routine construction can trigger pollution liabilities, making contractors pollution coverage a vital safeguard. If you have clients that work in contracting services, check out The Hard Hat Hub: our one stop shop for all policies involving contractor coverage.
A combined General Liability (GL) and Pollution Liability policy integrates traditional liability protection with environmental coverage. It is designed to provide seamless protection against both standard business risks (like bodily injury or property damage) and pollution-related exposures, which are usually excluded from standalone GL policies.
Scope of Coverage:
- General liability: Covers third-party claims for bodily injury, property damage, and personal/advertising injury arising from business operations.
- Pollution liability: Adds coverage for pollution-related claims, including cleanup costs, regulatory compliance, and third-party damages.
- Defense costs: Provides legal defense for both general liability and pollution claims.
- Products and completed operations: Extends protection to liabilities arising from products sold or work completed, including pollution exposures.
Policy Structure:
- Where coverage applies: Across business operations, premises, and job sites, depending on the insured’s activities.
- What coverage includes: A unified policy that avoids gaps between separate GL and pollution policies, ensuring consistent protection.
Common Uses:
 Manufacturing Facilities |  Warehouses | Refuse Systems and Recycling Centers |
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Combined general liability & pollution policies eliminate coverage gaps and offer streamlined protection. Addressing both everyday business risks and environmental liabilities ensures businesses don’t face uncovered exposures due to exclusions in other standard insurance policies.
Great American Environmental offers a variety of specialized coverage solutions designed to address unique environmental exposures that fall outside traditional site or contracting risks. These programs offer flexible, targeted protection for emerging, complex or niche operations where standard policies may not fully respond—helping clients manage liability, cleanup costs and evolving regulatory demands.
Industries We Serve
Heightened awareness of environmental pollution came in response to the Torrey Canyon disaster, Santa Barbara off-shore oil spill, and other major pollution incidents! As a result, the insurance industry introduced a pollution exclusion endorsement to the standard CGL policy, which excluded coverage for bodily injury and property damage
The late 1970s and early 1980s saw two major environmental laws enacted that dramatically changed the way our society and the law viewed environmental contamination.
Environmental responsibility that hadn’t previously existed was now being imposed on business and industry primarily with the passage of two federal laws: the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA).
- RCRA regulated and tracked the life cycle of hazardous waste.
- CERCLA, also known as Superfund, provided the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) broad authority to respond to releases of hazardous substances. It also imposed liability, without regard to fault, on those deemed responsible for environmental contamination, including strict liability for the cost of cleanup and remediation. The liability imposed was also joint and several, meaning everyone that was deemed responsible was liable for the full amount of the cost—both separately and collectively.
While these environmental laws are far more complex than is pertinent here, their effect was clear— environmental contamination that had been tolerated for many years was not only to be stopped but had to be cleaned up.
As large sums were involved, litigation quickly followed. Insurers were ordered by courts to pay hundreds of millions in remediation costs. This was the backdrop for developing the General Liability "bulletproof" pollution exclusion—one that would be upheld by the courts – and the impetus for the creation of environmental insurance.
As the insurers saw it, absent an enforceable pollution exclusion, the alternative was to not offer any general liability coverage—contributing to the liability crisis of the mid- and late 1980s.
At Great American we understand environmental liability can be highly complex. Let us help you better understand these complexities and how your clients can obtain policy protection against them by answering some frequently asked questions. Check out the FAQ webpage and document below:
Environmental FAQ Handout Environmental FAQ WebpageGreat American Environmental recognizes the need for an exclusive focus on effective management of environmental risks that could threaten the financial security of the businesses we serve. Our division follows the same business model that structures every division at Great American: deep expertise within a specific niche of the insurance industry. If you’d like to learn more about us and our division, check out the webpage below:
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Discover tools and insights that make it easier to navigate environmental risks while delivering stronger outcomes for your clients.