环境会计信息披露.doc

Environmental accounting．Issues，reporting and disclosure Abstract With cleanup costs of hazardous wastes expected to run as high as $500 billion to $1 trillion over the next 50 years, environmental reporting and disclosure by firms in the United States during the 2000s will become more prolific. This manuscript seeks to provide an understanding of the magnitude of environmental issues, a brief history of the EPA, discussion of environmental regulatory acts and enforcement, and reporting and disclosure requirements by the SEC and FASB. Introduction One of the biggest concerns that firms will face in the 2000s will be reporting and disclosing of environmental issues. By early 1996, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had identified over 36,000 hazardous waste sites in the United States, and the identification of additional sites continues. The EPA estimates that total cleanup costs of all identified hazardous waste sites could run as high as $500 billion to $1 trillion over the next 50 years (Jensen and Unger 1991). Interestingly, some of the largest public corporations in the United States have been identified by the EPA as responsible parties. The 1,405 most seriously contaminated properties have been placed on the National Priorities List (NPL), and are commonly referred to as Superfund sites. From these Superfund sites alone, the EPA has identified more than 15,000 Potentially Responsible Parties (PRPs) (Jensen and Unger 1991). (A PRP is a person or entity designated by the EPA as potentially responsible for the costs incurred in cleaning up the site(s).) The average cost to clean up a Superfund site is estimated to be $35 million (Dixon, Drezner, and Hammitt 1993); more troublesome sites could run as high as $1 billion each (Jensen and Unger 1991). To date, only about 498 of these Superfund sites have been cleaned up totally. In light of time and resource commitment costs to clean up these hazardous waste sites, the potential impact on some specific e