Last week Georgia’s PFAS Receiver Shield Act faced a significant procedural reset in the House. The bill’s intent is to protect "receivers", ie. landfills, wastewater plants, and contractors who handle but don't manufacture PFAS—from being swept into the massive wave of litigation currently flooding U.S. courts.
For contractors, this is a double-edged sword. While the bill seeks to limit liability for those complying with environmental rules, it underscores a terrifying reality: if you are excavating, transporting, or disposing of soil and materials containing PFAS, you are a "receiver". Under federal law, particularly CERCLA (Superfund), liability is strict, joint, and several. This means a contractor can be held responsible for the entire cost of a site cleanup simply for having moved contaminated dirt from point A to point B.
The Insurance Industry's "Silent" Retreat
As PFAS litigation hits record levels—exceeding 15,000 cases in federal multi-district litigation as of mid-February 2026—insurers are increasingly treating PFAS like the "new asbestos". Standard Commercial General Liability (CGL) policies have long used pollution exclusions to deny these claims.
More concerning is that even specialized Contractors Pollution Liability (CPL) carriers are now adding explicit PFAS exclusions. A contractor might believe they are covered for a "pollution occurrence" at a third-party landfill, only to find a microscopic exclusion in their policy that voids coverage for anything containing a perfluorinated carbon chain.
The NXUS Solution: Real Protection for the "Passive Receiver"
The most secure position for a contractor today is to hold a CPL policy that includes Non-Owned Disposal Site (NODS) coverage with no PFAS exclusion.
The NXUS Contractors Pollution Liability Policy (CPLI 09 25) stands out in the 2026 market as a robust safeguard for several reasons:
- Explicit NODS Coverage (Coverage F): NXUS specifically covers sums the insured becomes legally obligated to pay due to a "Disposal Pollution Occurrence" at a facility not owned or operated by the insured. If a landfill where you disposed of project waste is later declared a Superfund site due to PFAS, this is your primary line of defense.
- The Absence of a Broad PFAS Exclusion: Unlike many competitors who have implemented "total PFAS exclusions" in response to the 2026 litigation surge, the NXUS form does not list PFAS as a general exclusion. While it contains a narrow exclusion for PFAS related specifically to "water filtration and treatment" services (Exclusion L), it remains silent, and therefore provides some measure of coverage, for general construction activities like excavation, site work, and waste disposal.
- Transportation & Staging (Coverages C & E): PFAS risk isn't just at the dump. NXUS covers pollution occurrences during the movement of materials (Transportation) and while they are temporarily stored (Staging), providing a "cradle-to-grave" shield for the materials you handle.