Environmental Liabilities Course

About the Course

With the development of Federal environmental laws, new accounting principles and stakeholder expectations have become part of the ASTM Standard setting activity. This course reviews five key ASTM documents covering the valuation, settlement and reporting of all types of environmental liabilities. Any scientific, project management, legal or accounting specialist seeking to grow within the strategic framework of a larger organization will improve their understanding of the challenges of environmental liabilities and how to address them.

Course Content

The Environmental Liabilities Certificate course includes the following sessions:

• Module One: Recognition and Derecognition of Environmental Liabilities
• Module Two: Valuation of Environmental Liabilities
• Module Three: Disclosure of Environmental Liabilities
• Module Four: Disclosures Related to Climate Change and Emerging Contaminants
• Module Five: Due Diligence Procedures for Environmental Liabilities
• Module Six: Environmental Knowledge Management

Why You Should Attend

This course provides a verification of the student's proficiency and knowledge surrounding five key ASTM Standard Guides. By learning and adopting best practices from a wide variety of experts, the student will be able to deliver higher-quality services to optimize and settle an environmental liability portfolio, especially those sites with illiquid assets and unquantified liabilities.

Who Should Attend

Attendees should include those providing estimation, valuation, auditing and attestation to one or more portfolios of environmental liabilities (asset retirement obligations, environmental obligations, commitments, contingencies and guarantees)

• Corporate officers performing financial reporting or due diligence responsibilities
• Members of due diligence or purchase price accounting teams
• Members of corporate or government agency remedial project teams
• Members of legal and accounting teams
• Members of investment banking and merger/acquisition/spinoff teams
• Members of real estate teams acquiring, redeveloping or selling environmentally-impaired properties
• Individuals providing support services to any of the above

Learning Outcomes

Module One: Recognition and Derecognition of Environmental Liabilities

• identify the five types of environmental liabilities (E3123)
• create and manage a watch list of unbooked environmental liabilities
• identify six types of funding used to settle environmental liabilities: asset retirement costs, provisioned/reserved environmental costs, ordinary operating expenses, capital expenditures, second-party control/payment, third-party reimbursement
• identify conditions and transactions causing liability recognition
• construct and manage a pre-recognition Watch List
• Identify conditions and transactions causing liability derecognition
• Construct and manage a post-settlement Watch List

• reliably value environmental liabilities, and communicate estimates for wide range of purposes
• demonstrate correlation between spending and reductions in booked environmental liabilities
• report reliable valuations of environmental liabilities
• apply the Watch List in valuation
• perform event tree, probabilistic modeling, peer reviews and other method of valuation to validate calculations of Watch List items

Module Three: Disclosure of Environmental Liabilities

• evaluate past reports of environmental liabilities
• use common terminology for summarizing portfolios of environmental liabilities
• combine portfolios or liabilities following mergers, acquisitions and divestitures
• report progress in managing environmental liabilities
• apply the Watch List in disclosure

Module Four: Disclosures related to Climate Change

• identify environmental liabilities related to climate change
• develop response options leading to disclosures
• develop common disclosure statements and options
• combine portfolios or liabilities following mergers, acquisitions and divestitures
• report progress in managing environmental liabilities
• apply the Watch List in disclosure

Module Five: Due Diligence Procedures for Environmental Liabilities

• competency in reporting environmental liabilities for due diligence purposes
• enable user to demonstrate gap between booked (reserved) liabilities and the fair value used in due diligence
• identify any/all of five types of environmental liabilities at each location
• determine obligating events and recognition benchmarks for each location
• settle on single (multiple) discount rates, currencies, regulatory frameworks for baseline
• document baseline reserve (provision), operating expenses, capital expenditures, asset retirement obligations, third-party recoveries
• document escalation risks to Watch List
• following transaction close, recalculate all values during purchase accounting period based on new information provided by acquire liabilities' managers

Module Six: Environmental Knowledge Management

• understand the value of retaining specific areas of environmental liability management experience for future use
• understand the types of knowledge to regularly collect and catalog
• understand the best practices and lessons learned in records storage and sorting

Certificate and CEUs

Upon successful completion of this course, learners will receive a certificate of completion with 0.6 CEU's.

A digital badge will also be issued for this course. This badge can be added to your social media profiles to share your achievement!

About the Instructor

John Rosengard is a subject matter expert in environmental liabilities. His specialties include Environmental remediation liability forecasts, asset retirement obligation calculations, focused on oil/gas, ports, chemical manufacturing, pipelines, CERCLA/RCRA closures, environmental counterparty tracking, decision analysis, Monte Carlo modeling, Markov chain analysis of environmental default, and aerial photo interpretation.

John founded a software startup in 1994. He wrote ERCI's proprietary software, Defender, used by Fortune 500 corporations and public agencies for documenting their environmental liabilities (GAAP references IAS37, ASC 410-30, GASB 49) and asset retirement obligations (ASC 410-20, GASB 83). John developed software and related reports for 10-K disclosure, audit defense, decision support/budgeting, loss prevention and improvement of capital stewardship. He also conducted or supervised financial reporting for over 4,200 cleanup sites worldwide. In addition, John created GASB49 Defender version to support compliance by public agencies with pollution remediation obligations. He facilitated decision analysis for over 200 cleanup projects and led business process reengineering, lean sigma and software development teams, focused on environmental cleanup project portfolios and integration with enterprise software systems (SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, JD Edwards). John developed and administered financial assurance tracking systems for several Superfund PRP groups, continuously tracking participant viability, and directly enforcing successors/assigns documentation, need for additional guarantees or cash out. From 2000-2002 and from 2015 to 2016, John served on the ASTM committee which drafted and published the environmental reserve estimation (E2137) and disclosure (E2173) standard guides. Currently, John is a technical contact for ASTM E2173 (env disclosure). In January 2017, he started the ASTM workgroup on new standard E3123-17 for recognition/derecognition of env liabilities. From 1995 until 1997, member, later chair, of Restoration Advisory Board for two NPL cleanups at US Naval Weapons Station Concord (California). In 2009, John developed first parametric model for quickly bracketing river and harbor sediment cleanup costs with minimal data. Between 2010 and 2015, he wrote 24 webinar topics on environmental liabilities to over 500 registrants in 90 sessions; webinars posted on YouTube have over 1000 views.

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