Follow-up: Homeowners Insurance Won’t Cover Fracking Losses

In the light of Nationwide's decison to quit writing policies for those who lease land to frackers, the Hartford Courant did a quick round of calls and discovered that homeowners were already up a creek when it came to any damge from gas drilling they might incur:

"If the ground shifts at a fracking site and breaks the foundation of a nearby home, or if the chemicals taint a drinking-water well, standard homeowner and commercial-property policies won't cover the cost, said Robert Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute, a property-casualty resource and trade group. Standard property-insurance policies cover a specific set of calamities, such as fire, lightning, thunderstorms, ice and hail.

"There's really no distinction here between fracking or any other, say, mining, operation here," Hartwig said. "This sort of thing is not covered by the policy and it never was."