Congress moves to regulate fracking chemicals under drinking-water law
H.R. 6082 — Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act of 2025 · Filed by Diana DeGette (D-CO) · 24 cosponsors · Introduced Nov 18, 2025 · Referred to committee
Your members of Congress
Enter a ZIP to see where your representative and both senators stood on this bill.
Looked up on this device — your ZIP is never stored on our servers.
What it does
This bill closes a loophole in the Safe Drinking Water Act that has exempted hydraulic fracturing (fracking) from federal regulation. It requires oil, gas, and geothermal companies to disclose all chemicals used in fracking operations to state or federal regulators before and after each operation, with the information made public online. Companies must also immediately reveal proprietary chemical formulas to doctors and regulators during medical emergencies, though the formulas themselves remain confidential from the general public.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is to close a regulatory exemption and impose disclosure requirements on an extractive industry. It is fundamentally a public-health and environmental-protection measure, not a tax or spending bill.
What the text implies
- Fracking operations will face increased regulatory scrutiny and potential enforcement actions under the Safe Drinking Water Act, which may increase compliance costs and slow permitting timelines for oil, gas, and geothermal projects.
- Public disclosure of chemical lists (minus proprietary formulas) may enable environmental groups and citizens to identify and challenge operations near sensitive water sources, shifting power toward local opposition.
- The medical-emergency override of trade-secret protection sets a precedent that public-health urgency can override confidentiality claims, potentially affecting how other industries handle proprietary information in crisis scenarios.
- States with primary enforcement responsibility will gain new administrative burden and authority to regulate fracking, potentially creating a patchwork of state-level standards if some states are more aggressive than others.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Citizens gain transparency about chemicals used in fracking operations near their drinking water and regulators gain tools to protect water quality. The bill balances disclosure against legitimate trade-secret protection by keeping proprietary formulas confidential from the public while requiring immediate disclosure to medical professionals during emergencies.
Named in the bill
Safe Drinking Water Act, EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), oil and gas industry, geothermal energy producers, state environmental regulators
Where it stands
24 cosponsors: 24 Democrats.
- Nov 18, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Nov 18, 2025 — Referred to House Committee on Energy and Commerce · Congress.gov: “Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
1 lobbying clients named this bill on 2 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $500,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 24 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 0% of bills with at least one filing.
Diana DeGette, the sponsor, reported $915,500 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- Independent Petroleum Association of America — $500,000 on 2 filings
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 18, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (2,994 characters) on Jun 3, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 18, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
“Congress moves to regulate fracking chemicals under drinking-water law” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/hr6082 Report an error
The week in bills
One email, Sunday: what Congress passed, what it changed, and who paid.
One link arrives to confirm the address. It is used for this email and nothing else, and every issue carries an unsubscribe link.