Environmental Risk Communications, Inc. is a California software developer, focused on defining, quantifying, updating and displaying environmental liabilities. Since our founding in February 1994, we have supported 56 project teams with their environmental liability forecasting and management.

Questions We Answer

  1. Is this forecast reliable?
  2. Can financial auditors interpret and validate this forecast?
  3. Over time, how well do we remeasure our liabilities?
  4. How has spending reduced these liabilities?
  5. Over time, how will spending reduce these liabilities?
  6. How is spending prioritized? Does spending reduce, defer and/or help us better understand our liabilities?
  7. Over time, where are the escalation risks? What makes up the gaps between current and fair value?
  8. Is the portfolio (at fair value measurement) immaterial to the enterprise?
  9. Who are our environmental counterparties?
  10. Will asset retirement obligations grow faster than the capacity (or need) to settle them?
  11. Are these forecasts accurate, complete and independent of a short-term budget consolidation?
  12. Are estimates independent of the vendors closest to the work?
  13. What responsibilities can and cannot be safely outsourced or insured?
  14. How do processes and results compare to peers?

Firsts (or why you might have heard of us)

  • Developed Defender in Visual Basic with Crystal Ball®, used to manage 4,000+ unique environmental liabilities. 1994
  • Trained and supported 250+ corporate cleanup project managers and auditors. 1994-present
  • Developed first Monte Carlo model of a 2,000 site project portfolio. 1995
  • Shortest payback period for full Defender deployment: 3 hours. 1998
  • Developed one of the first due diligence models to support real-time fair value measurement of an environmental liability portfolio. 1999
  • Built and deployed Defender in 90 days to meet external auditor's compliance deadline. 2000
  • Developed environmental counterparty tracking systems (ability to pay, probability of default, expected value of default, bankruptcy claim valuation). 2001
  • Built "watch list" for estimating and justifying future reserve increases. Derived "bow wave" equations for reserve increase recurrence. 2002
  • Co-developed site strategic plan template to quantify liabilities. 2002
  • Facilitated benchmarking groups in Superfund, midstream oil/gas, chemicals and automotive industries. 2004, 2008, 2011, 2014-present
  • Developed first real-time parametric model for sediment cleanup costs. 2007
  • Released first Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) environmental counterparty tracking system for PRP group managing 100+ years of NPL site work. 2013
  • Built catalog of 21 webinars on environmental liabilities, on our YouTube page. 2011-present
  • Developed back-testing system for comparing disclosed vs fair value of remediation reserves and asset retirement obligations. 2015
ERCI 2023 Capabilities Summary