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Parts of the Eugene city park are fenced off because of dioxin contamination. The chemical is also found at the nearby J.H. Baxter Superfund site, but state regulators say the source of the park’s pollution remains unknown. The city is moving forward with a federal grant that is funding additional testing to guide the cleanup this year.
Mike Carroll and his dog were on their daily walk to Trainsong Park when he found it ringed with neon orange plastic fencing.
A laminated flyer zip-tied to the perforated panels read: “Soil samples showed an unexpected high level of dioxins.”
That was in 2021, when the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality was sampling soil across west Eugene to gauge pollution from J.H. Baxter & Co., a wood-treatment faciltiy that used chemicals linked to dioxins.
At Trainsong Park, researchers expected to find clean soil for a baseline comparison. Instead, they found cancer-causing dioxins.
At the time, they did not know how the 5-acre park became contaminated. Five years later, they still don’t know — even as testing resumed the last week of January, under the city of Eugene’s oversight.
On Jan. 26, Carroll stood in the park.
Large sections remain closed, including an area behind an empty swing set, where chain-link fencing separates the playground from contaminated soil.
“They’re still boring samples,” he said, emphatically. “Come on.”
Project managers said the lengthy cleanup timeline reflects, in part, the challenge of securing funding while trying to determine whether a responsible party could be identified to pay for it.
A complex history meets a complex chemical
Untangling the source of the contamination requires looking at two overlapping stories: a landscape shaped by centuries of changing land use and the complex chemistry of the dioxins now found in the soil.
Multiple assessments — including archaeological work by the University of Oregon and reviews by the Environmental Protection Agency — evaluated cultural resources and contamination at the site.
Lookout Eugene-Springfield paired land-use milestones with scientific findings related to dioxins.
The following timeline does not identify the source of the park contamination, but rather provides context about how dioxins associate with fire, industrial activity and transportation.
1800s and earlier: The archaeological assessment states the modern day park would have been an “ideal location for seasonal use and resource gathering.” In such locations, the Kalapuya people helped manage these landscapes through intentional, low-intensity burning. Settlers continued outdoor burning for agricultural and land-clearing purposes.
Dioxins can form during combustion, including when organic material burns in outdoor burning or wildfires. However, peer-reviewed research shows the primary source of dioxins and dioxinlike compounds is human-influenced, such as industrial activity.
Late 1800s to early 1900s: Settlers converted much of the southern Willamette Valley to agricultural fields, including this site, which served as a small orchard and farmland. The arrival of the Union Pacific rail line in the late 1800s spurred industrial development nearby.
Man-made dioxins date to the 1800s and increased with the rise of large-scale industrial chemical production in the early 1900s.
1940s through 1980s: Timber-related industry expanded nearby, including J.H. Baxter, which began operating in the 1940s and later adopted pentachlorophenol, or PCP, as it became widely used in wood treatment. Treated wood products, dried with chemical mixtures, were shipped off-site by truck and rail.
At what is now Trainsong Park, the property changed significantly in the 1970s when a wide road — possibly an Oregon Department of Transportation right of way — was built north to south through the site, according to the assessment. It is unclear who used the roadway because it dead-ended near what is now a stand of trees by the baseball field.
Peer-reviewed research shows the primary source of dioxins and dioxinlike compounds is human-influenced, such as industrial activity. PCP and dioxins are both chlorine-based organic chemicals. That means when manufacturers produce PCP, they use heat and chlorine, and under those conditions, some molecules can recombine and form dioxins as unintentional byproducts. The same thing can happen later if PCP-treated wood is burned or overheated. High, uncontrolled heat can break PCP molecules apart and allow them to recombine into dioxins.
Dioxins can travel in air emissions from production and in dust from treated products as they dry or move in transit.
In 1986, the city of Eugene bought the site and converted it into Trainsong Park.
Over the decades since, Eugene Parks and Open Space managed ongoing upgrades — including a playground, skate ramps and walking paths — work that involved moving large amounts of soil.
‘Ubiquitous nature’
Emily Proudfoot was among the crews, and she has spent nearly her entire 26-year career with the city of Eugene with her sleeves rolled up on projects at Trainsong Park.
“In the early 2000s, we didn’t know anything about, or even think to look for, soil contamination at Trainsong Park,” said Proudfoot, principal landscape architect for the parks department. “In retrospect, we did a lot of excavation in what turned out to be pretty contaminated soil.”
Trainsong Park sits between Highway 99 and Bethel Drive.
She said any fill brought into the park — gravel or soil — had to be clean, weed-free and meet strict specifications, suggesting the contamination most likely predated the park improvements. But she and state regulators still do not know the source of the contamination.
We’ve got to get a place for folks to be able to come back and enjoy.
Emily proudfoot, Eugene Parks and open space
“Due to the ubiquitous nature of dioxins in the environment, the source or sources of the area contamination is unknown,” state Department of Environmental Quality spokesperson Dylan Darling wrote in an email.
Lookout asked whether DEQ compared the chemical makeup of the dioxins found at Trainsong Park with those at the J.H. Baxter site. The agency did not provide an answer.
“You look for responsible parties, because they would be the ones to clean it up, right?” Proudfoot said. “We couldn’t get anything definitive.”
She and her team applied for a competitive federal brownfields grant, which the Environmental Protection Agency defines as a property where redevelopment is complicated by real or suspected contamination and cleanup costs are often beyond what owners or communities can afford. There are more than 450,000 brownfields in the United States, and the grants are funded through congressional appropriations.
The EPA awarded Trainsong Park $1.5 million in 2024.
DEQ is working with the city through a voluntary cleanup agreement, in which the city pays the agency to review and approve the technical work so the final remedy meets state standards.
They had hoped to start remediation work in 2025, but had to navigate government agreements, which lagged during last year’s federal shutdown.
Proudfoot said the focus now is on moving the cleanup forward. This month’s testing goes deeper than what DEQ could afford a few years ago, literally digging inches further into the ground.
She and city staff plan to host a series of public meetings to present the 2026 cleanup plan, discuss 2027 renovations and gather community feedback. The first will be at 6 p.m. April 9 at Lion of Judah Christian Center, 2600 Wood Ave., Eugene.
“We’ve got to get a place for folks to be able to come back and enjoy and be with their families and feel safe and, you know, build their neighborhood and community and social connections,” Proudfoot said.
That’s the change neighbors like Carroll say they are ready to see, though he said he wants to see concrete plans rather than another round of community discussion.
“‘Let’s have another meeting. Let’s bore another hole.’ Well, OK,” he said, throwing up his hands before walking on along the chain-link fence.