Energy Transfer seeks to overturn Pennsylvania clean water law after jet fuel spill

Energy Transfer is asking a Pennsylvania court to declare part of the state’s 89-year-old Clean Streams Law unconstitutional, months after its subsidiary Sunoco’s pipeline leaked jet fuel into the drinking water wells of dozens of homes in Bucks County.

The company filed suit in Commonwealth Court in April, arguing that Section 602(a) of the law is unconstitutional because it lacks a “mens rea,” or guilty-mind, requirement, meaning companies could face criminal penalties for pollution violations even when accidental, according to Spotlight PA.

The challenge follows a leak discovered in January 2025 on Sunoco’s 105.5-mile Twin Oaks pipeline, which runs from Aston in Delaware County to Newark, New Jersey. Residents of Upper Makefield Township’s Mount Eyre Manor neighborhood had complained of gasoline odor and taste in their well water since the summer of 2023, roughly 16 months before the breach was found.

CBS Philadelphia reported that six homes initially tested positive for jet fuel, with one resident, Kristine Wojnovich, saying more than 12 feet of fuel had accumulated in her well. Testing across 44 monitoring wells later found benzene, xylenes, toluene, ethylbenzene and MTBE in at least 28 homes, and the company has since paid for temporary water treatment systems at more than 200 properties, according to NewtownPANow. Benzene is a recognized carcinogen linked to leukemia.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday opened a criminal investigation into the spill in March 2025 after a referral from the Bucks County district attorney’s office. Energy Transfer disclosed the investigation to investors in February 2026 and filed its constitutional challenge to the Clean Streams Law two months later.

Sunday has urged the court to dismiss the company’s lawsuit, arguing it improperly seeks to pre-empt charges that have not yet been filed. “A criminal investigation is not a criminal charge,” he said. Bucks County District Attorney Joe Khan has filed to intervene in the case, warning that a ruling for Energy Transfer could invalidate other Pennsylvania laws that similarly lack a mens rea requirement, including sections of the traffic code and underage drinking statutes.

Commonwealth Court Judge Matthew Wolf unsealed most filings in the case in August. The court has set a September 24 deadline for Energy Transfer to submit its supporting brief, and no ruling has yet been issued on Khan’s motion to intervene.

Energy Transfer pleaded no contest in 2022 to environmental crimes tied to contamination at 22 sites across 11 Pennsylvania counties connected to its Mariner East 2 pipeline, as well as to a separate explosion on its Revolution pipeline.

Pennsylvania’s Clean Streams Law dates to 1937 and is the primary statute the state’s Department of Environmental Protection uses to enforce water pollution violations, both civil and criminal. Section 602(a), the provision Energy Transfer is challenging, allows prosecutors to bring criminal charges for discharging industrial waste into state waters without requiring proof that the discharge was intentional or the result of negligence.

If Commonwealth Court sides with Energy Transfer, the ruling would apply beyond the Clean Streams Law. Khan’s filing to intervene argues that a broad ruling on the mens rea question could reach other Pennsylvania statutes structured the same way, including parts of the vehicle code, the state’s underage drinking law and hunting regulations enforced by the Game Commission.

The Safe Drinking Water Act, the main federal law governing water quality, does not apply to private wells, leaving households in Mount Eyre Manor without the same federal protections that cover public water systems. Pennsylvania’s DEP has been overseeing well testing and remediation under a separate state program known as Act 2, while the US Environmental Protection Agency has not asserted jurisdiction over the cleanup.

Energy Transfer has proposed a longer-term cleanup plan for the site that includes vacuum extraction of contaminated groundwater and continued well monitoring, a process the company has told residents could take years to complete.