About 100 people attended a hearing in Eugene Wednesday night to find out what will happen to the old J.H. Baxter plant now that the facility has been listed on the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Priorities List.
About 70 people gathered in the Cascades Middle School, while about 30 more joined online, as officials from the EPA, Department of Environmental Quality, and other agencies discussed the long-term clean-up for the shuttered Baxter plant. Many locals asked about continued threats to the soil, water, and air near the facility, while others were concerned about health risks in an area that’s seen high dioxin counts in the soil, or slightly higher rates of certain cancers.
“What about my children?” one woman asked. “What about my granddaughter? Is she safe?”
Slides were shown detailing the EPA’s work on its "Time Critical Removal Action” where crews got busy taking down many large tanks and other infrastructure. This included the retorts, which were improperly used to boil off wastewater continuously throughout 2019. Images showed workers in hazmat suits covered in toxic sludge, and using welding torches to cut through the heavy steel which was an inch-thick.
Other presentations summarized the Superfund remedial process, asbestos abatement, and ways the community could become involved in further events.
While some attendees celebrated the Superfund designation, Randy Nattis, an On-Scene Coordinator for the EPA, was more measured.
“Is it a time to pause in the journey of the EPA and what we’ve done on the removal, and now how this is now a Superfund site and what the future looks like?” Nattis asked. “Yes. But at the same time it’s very valuable to talk about how we got here, and all the pain and suffering that the people who’ve lived in this community for years have had to endure.”
Nattis says $13 million has already been spent dismantling the Baxter wood treatment plant and cleaning old tanks and pipes. He says it will require several times that to get the site fully cleaned up, noting that sludge and toxins have been found 20-30 feet deep under the entirety of the Baxter site.
Hope and resentment
Many people attending the public hearing were happy to see federal dollars coming to clean-up and restore a facility long considered a scourge across West Eugene. At times their questions revealed frustration, fear, and anger as well.
Arjorie Arberry-Baribeault, a community organizer for Beyond Toxics, urged the audience not to finger-point and blame the EPA and other officials present. She said many questions remain, but those questions are for other agencies including the Oregon Health Authority.
Arberry-Baribeault herself raised her family in the vicinity of the Baxter site, and she blames the company and its president, Georgia Baxter-Krause, for pollution that led to her daughter’s cancer diagnosis. She was present in April when Baxter-Krause was sentenced to 90 days in prison and fined $1.5 million.
“It was always personal, not just for my family but for my community and Bethel,” Arberry-Baribeault told KLCC. “I’m hoping that whatever she was fined can be turned over to the community, to make something good. It’s blood money! So yeah, I wish it were $20 million, but it’s not.”
Meanwhile, two class-action suits are still waiting to be heard in U.S. District Court, with plaintiffs arguing that J.H. Baxter’s operations negatively impacted their properties, health and well-being.
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