Oregon Dry Cleaner Environmental Program

A 2023 law set an end date for Oregon's Dry Cleaner Environmental Program. The 1995 Legislature established it: dry cleaners paid fees into a fund used to clean up solvent contamination at dry cleaner sites, in exchange for liability relief from cleanups and cleanup costs. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) says House Bill 3273, signed on July 13, 2023, ends all aspects of the program on January 1, 2024, and prohibits the use of perchloroethylene (perc) and n-propyl bromide as dry cleaning solvents on January 1, 2028. DEQ's page was written before the end date and speaks of it in the future tense.

In a Phase I ESA

ASTM E1527-21 does not name dry cleaner program records among its standard record sources. The program's end changes how a current or former dry cleaner reads in an Oregon Phase I. Seven details shape it.

• The liability shield ends with the program. DEQ says liability for any release of dry cleaning solvent from a dry cleaning facility is determined as provided by Oregon Revised Statute 465.255, and will be treated the same as liability for the release of any other hazardous substance from any other property or industry. For a landlord who paid into the program, DEQ says liability protection sunsets with the program, and that nothing in the bill extended it.
• A later owner who knew can be liable. Among the persons DEQ lists as strictly liable under that statute is an owner or operator who became one after the release and who knew or reasonably should have known of the release at that time. DEQ says responsible parties are generally jointly and severally liable.
• The program finished some cleanups and planned to hand back others. DEQ says over 50 cleanups were completed during the program, with approximately $8.4 million spent, and that seven were ongoing when the page was written. It says projects with longer-term cleanup or with engineering controls will transition to the owners or operators for completion, subject to their ability to pay or to any defenses under the statute. DEQ says completed cleanup sites with controls become a due care obligation of the current owner or operator. See Institutional and Engineering Controls.
• Sites on the waiting list get their fee back, not a cleanup. DEQ says sites that applied and paid an initial fee will have the fee returned, and that no additional cleanups are being accepted. An application to the program is not a cleanup.
• DEQ says every perc site may be contaminated. DEQ's words are that every site that has ever used perc has the potential to be contaminated, and that there are several hundred across the state.
• The end of the program did not order assessments. Asked whether it will start requiring site assessments, DEQ says it will rely on its usual procedures under Oregon Revised Statutes Chapter 465 to decide whether any site assessment is necessary.
• A perc user has an air permit, for now. DEQ says dry cleaners using perc are required to have a General Air Contaminant Discharge permit and are inspected by DEQ air quality staff every five years, and that the permits will be revoked once the perc ban is in effect. After that, dry cleaners are subject to inspection by hazardous waste compliance inspectors. An air permit record is one way to place a perc user at an address.

DEQ describes how the contamination happened: spills or leaks of solvent, and, before the risks were widely known, spent filters and sludge thrown on the ground and spent solvent and wastewater poured into a floor drain or a leaky sanitary sewer.

What the record shows

DEQ's page still lists waste minimization requirements for dry cleaners, among them submitting annual reports of waste minimization and hazardous waste management practices and reporting releases of dry cleaning solvent. It also says a law enacted in June 2004 required all dry cleaning operators and owners to investigate whether historical or current insurance policies were available to help fund cleanup work. Where they survive, the annual reports and release reports are documents to ask for. The page does not say whether the insurance investigations were filed with DEQ.

Where to look a site up

• The page read links no list of dry cleaners or of the program's cleanup sites.
• DEQ says the remaining dry cleaner facilities with historical releases would be cleaned up under the same process as other contaminated industrial or commercial facilities. Search a site in the Your DEQ Online Public Records Portal; see the Environmental Cleanup Site Information database page.
• The contacts on DEQ's dry cleaner page are named staff and are not repeated here. The Environmental Cleanup Program's general line, from its own page, is 1-800-452-4011.

Getting the file

The page read gives no records route of its own. DEQ's general route is described on the Your DEQ Online and public records requests page.

Sources

Oregon Department of Environmental Quality pages, read October 7, 2026, no modified date shown:

• Dry Cleaner Environmental Program
• Environmental Cleanup Program