By this time of year, most remediation teams are done budgeting for next year and  have returned their attention to meeting this year’s budget. In managing environmental remediation liabilities and asset retirement obligations, it may be obvious that your company uses the budgeting and reserve update process to confirm any new data available and recent decisions made. Sometimes, reserve review meetings can degrade into decision analysis sessions, where the remedy selection or whether to honor consent decrees comes up for discussion.

For forward-looking managers, spending today’s cash on yesterday’s liabilities seems like a tempting target: why not delay? Why not switch to a new strategy like “fence and monitor”? Why not litigate?

If you manage an environmental liability portfolio for your company, remember a  rule from baseball: this is a pitch in the dirt, and you don’t have to swing.

Participating in consent decrees and cleaning up sites usually goes beyond a financial obligation. Showing commitments and visible progress to regulators and their communities is not just good PR, it’s good business. Contractors are sensitive and reactive to their clients’ stop and start messages.

Let’s face a few facts: environmental cleanup projects deal with the unknown. What is the target soil volume? How long will the groundwater treatment system need to run? Is the plume off-site? What cleanup goals will the regulators accept if the technology doesn’t work?

Reserve updates are a communication channel to bring new information forward, at least once a year. Using that discussion to revisit old decisions is tempting, but rarely brings the desired outcomes of lower costs, faster closure, or a more valuable brownfield property.