This week, crews with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency were sent to the shuttered J.H. Baxter wood treatment plant in Eugene’s Bethel neighborhood.
Administrators say their assignment was to control hazardous substances from escaping an underground contamination site, and that this is the second Time-Critical Removal Action (TCRA) for the Superfund site, after the first wrapped up in February.
Work on this latest action will run through spring, EPA Region 10 administrator Emma Pokon told KLCC. Pokon added that there’s no further risk for local residents, who’ve contended with noxious odors, dioxin contamination, and concerns over air and water quality during the Baxter facility’s operation for roughly 80 years before it closed permanently in 2022.
“We know that the community is concerned,” said Pokon. “There are treatment systems in place currently to prevent additional contamination from getting off site.”
Another EPA official, Randy Nattis, said workers have also put up air monitoring meters along the fence that lines Roosevelt Boulevard.
“It's really for our workers to make sure that they're safe, they're wearing the right protection,” he said. “But as well to ensure that we have no issues from what we're doing that may migrate from that work to the community.”
The EPA began removing hardware, materials, and chemicals from the site in 2024, including its “tank farm,” before demolishing the remaining structures. Crews have removed more than 750,000 gallons of hazardous waste from the facility, and decontaminated and removed more than 65 tanks, vessels, sumps, and related structures.
Nattis said J.H. Baxter keeps one employee at the facility, to monitor a groundwater pump and a surface water treatment system.
The site was added to the EPA’s Superfund National Priorities List in July 2025. Though it’s been more than four years since it closed, residents have continued to share concerns about the plant’s emissions and effects on the environment.
Pokon said the immediate expense for cleanup and containment of the J.H. Baxter site is already at $25 million, with continued cleanup taking years, even decades.
Regarding this most recent response to contamination fears, Pokon struck a positive chord.
“For us, it means that ultimately the site cleanup will happen faster because we are doing this removal action in parallel with that fuller evaluation and work studying the site to understand what the full needs will be,” she said, praising EPA Region 10’s deployment of workers to the site. “In fact, to their credit, this site and the action that they're taking at J.H. Baxter to accelerate the cleanup, it's being used as an example for the program nationally for how we'd like to see sites progress.”
When asked about the extent of the contamination, Nattis said his team knows it’s under the facility and that they will “chase it.”
“We did a study back in February using drill rigs, so we know in areas it can be down to 15 or 20 feet,” he said. “But we will find the contamination and remove it.”
The EPA’s testing nine months ago found the presence of pentachlorophenol, petroleum-based carrier oils, creosote-derived constituents, and metals in subsurface soils.
“In addition to contamination found beneath many of the previous structures, EPA confirmed the former wood-treating drip pads themselves were contaminated and required removal,” stated an EPA release.
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