With the requirements of the Public Sector Accounting
Board's "Accounting Standard on Liability for Contaminated
Sites" (PS 3260) applying to the 2014-2015 fiscal year, public
sector entities (federal, provincial and municipal governments,
universities, schools and hospitals) may find themselves scrambling
to meet their obligations to identify, report and account for long
forgotten buried liabilities. Under PS 3260 public sector entities
must now account for the remediation liabilities associated with
"contaminated sites", which are sites where contamination
exceeds the applicable environmental standards, but does NOT
include closed solid waste landfill sites that are subject to a
separate standard. PS 3260 requires that an estimate of remediation
liability be included for all such contaminated sites that are no
longer in active or productive use, and for which a public sector
entity is responsible either as a result of legal or voluntary
assumption of remediation
