On Friday January 30, 2026, two Pennsylvania state legislators, state Sen. Steve Santarsiero and state Rep. Perry Warren (collectively, the “Sponsors”), announced the Pennsylvania Environmental Cleanup and Responsibility Act (the “Bill”). The Sponsors style this proposed legislation as updating how Pennsylvania handles environmental cleanups, arguing that “the bill would hold polluters accountable through strict and joint-and-several liability, and would ensure that responsible parties – not taxpayers – pay for the cleanup.” But the intervening seven months have seen shockingly little discussion about this proposed legislation and the effect it may (or may not) have on Pennsylvania environmental law and litigation. This article attempts to fill that gap in analysis.
The Bill: More Questions Than Answers
Modeled on New Jersey’s Spill Act, the Bill seeks to fill purported gaps between two of Pennsylvania’s most important environmental cleanup laws, the Hazardous Sites Cleanup Act (HSCA) and the Land Recycling and Environmental Remediation Standards Act (better known as Act 2), by creating a framework for addressing “active discharges and immediate threats to human health and the environment.” Pennsylvania enacted the HSCA on October 18, 1988, and that law mirrors many other state analogs to the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. The HSCA confers authority upon the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (“PADEP”) to, among other things, conduct site investigations and assessments, recover response costs, and administer the Hazardous Sites Cleanup Fund. 35 P.S. § 6020.102(12). This existing framework imposes strict liability for response costs, natural resource damages, and related health assessments on three separate classes of Potentially Responsible Parties (PRPs): owners/operators, generators/arrangers, and transporters. 35 P.S. § 6020.702(a); 35 P.S. § 6020.701(a)(1)-(3).[1] But according to the Sponsors, under the HSCA, PADEP currently lacks authority to control the course of environmental cleanups, and the law imposes few cleanup obligations on potentially responsible parties. The Sponsors’ proposed amendments purport to address those alleged issues.
The Bill currently stands at only 10 pages, two of which are non-substantive. To its credit, the Bill is explicit in amending the HSCA to address the Sponsor’ concerns regarding gaps in PADEP’s authority:
(b) Purposes.–The purposes of this chapter are to:
(1) Establish a clear and enforceable framework for immediate response to discharges of hazardous substances.
(2) Require prompt cleanup and removal of contamination that threatens human health or the environment.
(3) Authorize the department to act immediately and recover costs from responsible persons.
(4) Ensure restoration of environmental conditions consistent with the constitutional rights of the people of this Commonwealth.
Bill, Page 2. But many of the Bill’s provisions raise more questions than they answer, raising the specter that PRPs may be subject to more onerous cleanup requirements than existed previously and greatly increasing compliance costs.
For example, the Bill subjects PRPs to a “constitutional standard” for cleanups: “A responsible person shall conduct cleanup and removal to achieve conditions consistent with section 27 of Article I of the Constitution of Pennsylvania to provide for clean air, pure water and the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of this Commonwealth’s environment.” But this section does nothing to explain what “pure water” or “clean air” are, and it is unclear whether this would create a more exacting standard than presently exists. It seems possible that a “pure water” standard could be interpreted to require cleanups to levels of only trace amounts of contamination, which would require PRPs to fund costly solutions in furtherance of groundwater remediation. Given the seemingly ubiquitous nature of contamination in groundwater and the increasingly common identification of new hazardous substances (e.g., PFAS or 6PPD-quinone), litigation feels inevitable to settle contribution claims and the interpretation of these potentially ambiguous or vague requirements.
To facilitate quick implementation and interpretation, the Bill permits PADEP to promulgate temporary regulations addressing the new cleanup standards. And according to the Bill, those temporary regulations are not subject to traditional administrative laws:
(i) Section 612 of the act of April 9, 1929 (P.L.177, No.175), known as The Administrative Code of 1929.
(ii) Sections 201, 202, 203, 204 and 205 of the act of July 31, 1968 (P.L.769, No.240), referred to as the Commonwealth Documents Law.
(iii) Sections 204(b) and 301(10) of the act of October 15, 1980 (P.L.950, No.164), known as the Commonwealth Attorneys Act.
(iv) The act of June 25, 1982 (P.L.633, No.181), known as the Regulatory Review Act.
Bill, Page 6. The lack of substantive public input or guardrails on the temporary regulations provides the implementing administration with substantial power to shape, essentially by fiat, the course of cleanups within Pennsylvania. And while the temporary regulations are intended to sunset “no later than two years following the publication of the temporary regulations,” there is no guarantee that final regulations would make it through the regulatory process within that time period. It is thus distinctly possible that temporary regulations extend (maybe significantly) beyond the statutory sunset provision to avoid creating a gap in required enforcement regulations.
Such regulations would reach beyond simply PADEP-led cleanups. When EPA issues a Record of Decision at a federally managed Superfund site, the agency includes what are known as Applicable or Relevant and Appropriate Requirements, or ARARs, as requirements that control the scope and manner of cleanup required. Any temporary regulations enacted pursuant to the Bill would be considered ARARs for any federally managed sites in Pennsylvania, as those regulations would create cleanup standards the State has determined are appropriate for sites within its borders.[2]
Further, the Bill requires PRPs to actually remove contamination from residential areas instead of merely containing it: “A responsible person may not rely on institutional or engineering controls as the sole remedy in a residential area unless the department determines both of the following: (1) Complete removal is infeasible; (2) The controls provide long-term protection consistent with subsection (a).” Bill, Page 6. The requirement of active remediation, barring applicability of both subsections (1) and (2), could substantially increase costs for PRPs. Caps would no longer be sufficient in residential areas, and PRPs would be required to actually remediate or excavate contaminated soils. In occupied residential areas, it is easy to see how complicated it could be to remove soils from around the foundation of a house without damaging the house itself. While many sites take a staged approach to remedy implementation, either implementing stages for the entire site or for different operable units at one time to decrease implementation and mobilization costs, under the Bill’s approach, each individual house may have to be fully remediated at one time, creating the potential for drastic increases in implementation costs.
The Bill’s remediation timelines present further hurdles for PRPs. Upon identification of an “immediate environmental concern,” a defined term in the Bill, PADEP must require a PRP to “immediately undertake containment actions,” “complete a preliminary site assessment within 30 days,” and “complete a remedial investigation within 90 days, including delineation of the nature and extent of contamination.” While the Bill does allow for extensions of those timeframes, any practitioner with experience at contaminated sites knows that remedial investigations can take years if not decades.[3] While quick action on cleanups is necessary to keep costs down and protect public health and the environment, those priorities must be balanced against the need to collect the necessary data over time to ensure any remedy is both cost and functionally effective.
One of the biggest, and potentially most important, changes to the HSCA is to the definition of hazardous substances. The HSCA, like CERCLA, generally excludes petroleum products and petroleum distillates from the definition of “hazardous substance.” 35 P.S. § 6020.103; 42 U.S.C. § 9601(14). But the Bill explicitly includes those products as hazardous substances for purposes of the Chapter: “Petroleum, crude oil, gasoline, jet fuel, diesel fuel, fuel oil and petroleum products.” Bill, Page 3. This inclusion makes sense given that the impetus for the Bill was a pipeline leak in Bucks County, PA, which allegedly discharged jet fuel into local drinking water supplies. But the implications from including petroleum products in the definition of hazardous substances are far reaching, as petroleum products are incredibly common and, in theory, the spilling of gasoline could be sufficient to support requiring a remedial investigation and the identification of additional PRPs.
The Bill, if passed, would create substantial new obligations and potential liabilities for PRPs. It also remains to be seen whether any changes may come from the legislative process. But stakeholders would be wise to monitor the Bill’s draft text moving forward and be prepared to engage with state legislators on changes to the language that may better effectuate cleanups in Pennsylvania.
Where Does it Stand Now
House Bill 2178, the Pennsylvania Environmental Cleanup and Responsibility Act, has been co-sponsored by a bipartisan coalition of 19 other state representatives, in addition to Representative Warren. The State Senate counterpart, Senate Bill 1157, has been co-sponsored by a bipartisan coalition of 15 other state senators in addition to Senator Santarsiero. While the bipartisan nature of these co-sponsorships is minimal, each having only one republican co-sponsor in each chamber, it is notable that the issue of updating Pennsylvania’s HSCA is a cross-aisle issue even at this early stage in the drafting process.
But despite at least some bipartisan support, the Bill has stalled in the Republican-led state Senate. The Senate has not taken any action since the Bill was referred to the Senate Committee on Environmental Resources & Energy on February 27, 2026, a somewhat surprising development as the Act’s lone Republican Senator Co-Sponsor, Sen. Elder Vogel, is a member of the reviewing committee. The Senate’s slow pace stands in contrast to the state House, where the Act was referred to the House Committee on Environment & Natural Resource Protection on April 8, 2026, and was reported as committed[4] on April 27, 2026, only 19 days later, in a partisan-line vote.
It is unclear if the Republican-led state Senate has an appetite for passing this proposed legislation. But in an election year where, as always, half the Pennsylvania state Senate seats are on the ballot, we could see, as with CERCLA’s SARA amendments, a lame duck congressional session passing an imperfect environmental bill.
[1] HSCA breaks down owner/operator liability into three separate sub-categories, which while important in practice, are unimportant for purposes of this article.[2] This assumes, of course, that any cleanup is required.
[3] The author is currently representing clients at a site where the remedial investigation has been ongoing, in one form or another, for two decades.
[4] This means it went through committee and was reported back to the House floor with no changes made by the committee.
For questions, please contact author Wade Stephens at wstephens@lssh-law.com.
Reprinted with permission from the August 31, 2026 edition of the The Legal Intelligencer © 2026 ALM Global Properties, LLC, trading as Centellic. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited, contact 877-256-2472 or asset-and-logo-licensing@alm.com.