Horrors of Underground Storage Tank Reimbursement
As Halloween approaches, it’s time for spook and ghoul enthusiasts everywhere to put the final touches on their plans for a frightful night of horror-filled fun. No matter how much you like to be frightened, there are some scares that no individual should tolerate, like the avoidable losses from mistakes made during an underground storage tank (UST) cleanup claim or the little monster of an inefficient process that is disrupting your business.
At Pinnacle Environmental Management Support, we have seen our share of horrors relating to inefficient and costly claims management mistakes, and we’ve helped our clients slay the dragons hidden in their process and ultimately recover more and spend less time waiting to recover their cleanup costs.
Learn more about Pinnacle has helped recover more for our clients below!
While watching a magician make their assistant disappear can wow and amaze a crowd in Vegas, when you’ve spent your money cleaning up a property and are ready to submit your claim, you certainly don’t want eligible costs to be a part of a vanishing act!
Recently in Massachusetts, a claimant had their total approved amount reduced to account for an amount owed back to the State Fund—a perfectly normal process called recoupment. Audits to ensure accuracy take place regularly, and if some amount is deemed inaccurately reimbursed, the Fund will request it get paid back. If the claimant disagrees with the request for recoupment, they can file an appeal and take it to a Conference to discuss with the Fund managers, but failure to pay back or request an appeal will result in the Department of Revenue offsetting those amounts against other recently approved claims.
In practice, no offset should ever occur against a claim when there is an outstanding appeal. However, in early 2021, Pinnacle noticed that on one such claim that this had happened. Despite an appeal being filed and a request for Conference being made on this one claim, almost 15% of the total amount claimed had been marked as recoupment and was deducted from the approved amount of another claim. Pinnacle quickly took action and helped correct this error, ensuring the client had their recovery amount reappear with very little effort. Abracadabra!
While we may don our Halloween mask to go out and provide some good-natured frights for the neighborhood kids, masks are a reminder that you can’t take everyone, or everything, at “face value.”
Speaking of face value, after a tank owner had over $670,000 denied from a recent request for reimbursement--comprising over half of the costs associated with the cleanup project--our team was astute enough not to take the Fund’s decision at “face value.” The cleanup at this particular site involved what many sites require where older tanks exist – a tank pull, remedial excavation activities, well installation and groundwater monitoring, and site redevelopment work – all happening simultaneously.
While our team did a very thorough job at identifying fund ineligible charges on very detailed, complicated invoices (such as redevelopment activities and tank pull costs) to ensure they were excluded from the request for reimbursement, Fund staff did not review the claim in the same detail and instead denied all costs on invoices that mentioned those ineligible activities. Though it was a complicated appeal, Pinnacle meticulously reviewed each invoice in question and matched the costs to technical reports to provide the documentation required by the fund, provided very clear documentation to support the appeal, and answered every concern raised by the claim reviewer.
In the end, the client received reimbursement of the additional $670,000 of eligible costs, and this reinforced the idea that you can’t take reviewers' decisions at “face value!”
Whether it’s finding pirate treasure or unraveling a thrilling mystery, digging deeper to uncover what’s below the surface can be rewarding if you’re looking with keen eyes. In the case of leaking UST claims management, having Pinnacle EMS on the case led to one UST tank owner being refunded for invoiced lab charges that should have been paid by their remediation consultant.
When possible, most UST owners/operators with a release typically look to an environmental consultant to work on their behalf to clean up a release and bill the State Fund directly. While the UST owner/operator may end up paying for some ineligible charges (such as landscape work or the tank pull itself), typically, they do not incur costs or cash flow for the work. As would be the case in almost any contract, it’s imperative that the UST owner/operator has a process in place to review these invoices carefully to ensure they aren’t incurring costs they shouldn’t be.
During a recent review of one new client’s job costs, Pinnacle’s team noted laboratory invoices were paid by our client. After reaching out to the consultant, it was discovered that indeed the charges from this lab were being incorrectly charged to the tank owner – who mistakenly paid them since they had other projects where they used that same lab. It was due to Pinnacle’s thorough review of project-to-date costs that these erroneous billings were discovered and are now in the process of being refunded. The invoices have now been rebilled to the consultant so they could be submitted properly to the Fund for reimbursement.
As October wraps up and Halloween prepares to scare, it’s important to remember that some spooks and frights can be avoided if you have the right team to watch your back. If you’re an underground storage tank owner or operator, or an environmental consultant working on remediating petroleum leaks, paying more than you need to, or recovering less eligible clean-up costs than you should, might be enough to keep you up at night.
However, by partnering with a professional claims management firm with a winning process and decades of expertise, you’ll sleep better knowing that you’re not leaving any money on the table as all eligible leaking UST cleanup costs are reimbursed and any unnecessary costs are avoided before they add up to a substantial loss to your business.
For more stories about how we helped our clients avoid costs, recover more, or improve their recovery timeline, follow our LinkedIn company page.
There, you’ll also find industry updates affecting fuel retailers and the environmental consultants that help them address contaminants on their properties
Contact Pinnacle Environmental Management Support to learn more about the difference can make to your business.