Company: CLH
Filing Date: 2025-02-19
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000822818-25-000007
Chunk: 86

Company: CLEAN HARBORS INC
Filing Date: 2025-02-19
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 86
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 based on our audits. We are a public accounting firm registered with the PCAOB and are required to be independent with respect to the Company in accordance with the U.S. federal securities laws and the applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.

We conducted our audits in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are free of material misstatement, whether due to error or fraud. Our audits included performing procedures to assess the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements, whether due to error or fraud, and performing procedures that respond to those risks. Such procedures included examining, on a test basis, evidence regarding the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. Our audits also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the financial statements. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion.

Critical Audit Matter

The critical audit matter communicated below is a matter arising from the current-period audit of the financial statements that was communicated or required to be communicated to the audit committee and that (1) relates to accounts or disclosures that are material to the financial statements and (2) involved our especially challenging, subjective, or complex judgments. The communication of the critical audit matter does not alter in any way our opinion on the financial statements, taken as a whole, and we are not, by communicating the critical audit matter below, providing a separate opinion on the critical audit matter or on the accounts or disclosures to which it relates.

Remedial Liabilities - Refer to Note 2, "Significant Accounting Policies", and Note 11, "Remedial Liabilities", to the financial statements

Critical Audit Matter Description

Remedial liabilities include the costs of removal or containment of contaminated material, the treatment of potentially contaminated groundwater and maintenance and monitoring costs necessary to comply with regulatory requirements. The estimate of remedial liabilities involves an analysis of numerous factors that are inherently difficult to estimate and involve a significant amount of judgment. The Company routinely reviews and evaluates the sites for which remedial liabilities have been recognized to determine if there should be changes in the cost estimates. As a result, the valuation of liabilities is subject to material changes as additional information becomes available, particularly as it relates to changes in technologies and changes in laws and regulations that govern the remediation efforts.

Total remedial liabilities recorded as of December 31, 2024 were $111.7 million.

Given the