J.H. Baxter dumped waste under Pre’s Trail; it’s been unchecked for decades

Fifty years ago, runners in bold shorts, knee-high socks and headbands moved in waves along a new soft-surface course at Alton Baker Park.

They breathed life into a dusty trail of freshly laid wood chips, carrying the vivid spirit of Steve Prefontaine, America’s greatest distance runner of the era, just months after his death. 

“A facility like this, one of which is available to all joggers in the Eugene community, was one of Steve Prefontaine’s dreams,” said Kenny Moore, friend and Olympian, on Sept. 1, 1975, the official opening day for Pre’s Trail. 

But the dedication wasn’t just to Pre, Moore said, but also to “the future of Alton Baker Park, particularly the thousands of people who have vicariously basked in his accomplishments and will benefit from the use of the trail.”

That future is here, Moore’s words realized in full. In 2025, at almost any time of day, people can be found on the roughly 4-mile loop at the heart of Eugene and Springfield — a connection between the two cities in a park that serves as a community gathering space.

On the western parts of the trail, nearer the Cuthbert Amphitheater, users find themselves in the dappled light of trees along the trail. The eastern portions, nearer Interstate 5 and Springfield, have little shade, and make a sun-soaked 2-mile loop around a meadow where grasses and wildflowers sway in the wind.  

That’s because the layer of soil there is thin, and most roots can’t take deep hold. Beneath lies a decommissioned county landfill that for nearly a decade served as a catchall for residential and commercial waste. Among its users was J.H. Baxter, a company that treated wood with pesticides at a west Eugene facility that is now a Superfund site. 

The park was developed in three months during an age of minimal environmental regulation. Landfills in other areas have been turned into parks but have undergone extensive testing for contamination. For example, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality listed Cully Park in Portland in its Brownfield Program, which provides funding to evaluate whether risks are present for human health.

However, for Day Island Landfill, neither the DEQ nor Lane County has reviewed the site in the last 25 years, relying instead on monitoring and testing conducted in the 1980s and 1990s, which were preliminary assessments not intended to be conclusive.

Agencies point to low risk based on preliminary assessments, but the site has not received a final clearance letter that rules out future action.

They also have not revisited the site since the Superfund designation for Baxter’s west Eugene location earlier this year.

In the wake of the Environmental Protection Agency’s July announcement about the Baxter Superfund site, Lookout Eugene-Springfield set out to understand the extent of the company’s pollution. Documents revealed a chemical disposal area in the landfill where the company disposed of barrels with vague accounts of their contents. A 1992 report showed a chemical used at Baxter’s facility was present in samples from the landfill.

The EPA, DEQ, and Lane County have not fully answered questions we have posed for weeks about oversight and accountability for the landfill.

The answers may still be buried in the land.

5,000 gallons of ‘unspecified’ waste buried 

Anyone running, biking or walking from under the Interstate 5 bridge west toward Alton Baker Park, on a paved path — just feet from Pre’s Trail — will gradually climb 30 to 40 feet. This elevation gain is the mound of the Day Island Landfill, where an estimated 950,000 tons of solid waste lie buried.

During the height of its operation, which began in the early 1960s, the Day Island Landfill received up to 70% of Lane County’s garbage. Record-keeping was haphazard, predating the enforcement of environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act, which required stricter paperwork and standardized monitoring. 

A 1971 landfill log, however, shows a plumbing contractor brought 1,400 gallons of waste in barrels generated from wood-preserving activity at J.H. Baxter. The company used chemicals such as waxy pentachlorophenol in its mixes to treat items like utility poles to resist termites and fungi, among other things. 

Pentachlorophenol is not a naturally occurring chemical, and it is designed to resist decay, meaning it doesn’t break down easily. In waste, it can be saturated in oil, as found two hours north in Sheridan at the Stella-Jones Corp.

Oregon’s Environmental Cleanup Site Information database, maintained by DEQ, lists J.H. Baxter’s 1,400 gallons of waste as “unspecified oil,” noting oil from wood treaters can contain chemicals. It also lists another 3,650 gallons of “unspecified oil,” without identifying the waste’s origin.

Sample testing of groundwater and soil in the Day Island Landfill detected concentrations of pentachlorophenol at levels that exceed federal drinking water standards. Testing also detected arsenic, a naturally occurring element that can be harmful in excessive amounts, and was found at the west Eugene facility.

There are no public drinking water wells in the landfill area. Eugene Water and Electric Board draws its drinking water directly from the McKenzie River. Springfield Utility Board operates a network of wells and they are east of Interstate 5: one group clustered along the Willamette River near Clearwater Park and another group clustered along the McKenzie River in Thurston.

What governments say

Scientists commissioned by DEQ conducted preliminary assessments in 1985 and 1992, which found no imminent hazard to the public or surrounding community. But the report noted the assessment was not an in-depth investigation, but intended to identify next steps for contaminated sites.

In 1994, an EPA inspection determined the landfill did not qualify for its own Superfund site. Alice Corcoran, a public affairs specialist for the region that oversees J.H. Baxter, said the agency could not confirm a review since 1994, because the records are stored at a federal center across the country and are not readily accessible. 

DEQ has not reviewed the landfill in at least 25 years, according to spokesperson Dylan Darling, in response to Lookout Eugene-Springfield’s question about whether it had monitored the landfill since the 1992 assessment.

DEQ has not cleared the landfill of risk through a “No Further Action” status, and in 2024, a department database listed it as a “suspect site requiring further investigation.”

In a statement, Darling referenced the 1992 assessment, writing: “When the landfill was closed in 1974 it was covered with a minimum of two feet of soil and then vegetation.”

The 1992 assessment also mentions areas receiving less than a one-foot cap, a cover over a landfill that typically consists of soil, vegetation, and a tarp-like impermeable liner. Such a liner is not documented in reports for the Day Island Landfill.

“If Lane County wanted to pursue monitoring, site assessment, or a No Further Action letter then it has the option to enter DEQ’s Voluntary Cleanup Program,” Darling wrote. “If the site were entered into the program, Lane County would likely have to wait for a project manager from DEQ because it is a site that is of relatively low risk given the lack of off-site impact and the two feet of cover and vegetation that’s over any possible contamination.”

Lane County has not done any monitoring since its transferred the property to the city of Eugene, said spokesperson Devon Ashbridge. However, the agreement states that the county remains the responsible agency for the landfill.

“Lane County has been a full participant in assessments performed at the site and will continue to participate if a future assessment is called for by the DEQ or another regulatory agency,” Ashbridge said in an email.

Neither the state DEQ, the EPA, nor Lane County responded to Lookout Eugene-Springfield’s questions about whether a new investigation will be opened at the former landfill, given that Baxter, the generator of some of its waste, is now a Superfund site.

The EPA has designated dozens of landfills Superfund sites throughout the United States since the program started in the 1980. For example, in southwest Tennessee, two landfills became Superfund sites because of waste generated by a pesticide producer, whose facility may also be turned over to the EPA for Superfund designation.

‘A lot of unknowns’

J.H. Baxter’s west Eugene facility is notorious for how the company knowingly mishandled waste. 

An EPA investigation found chemicals such as pentachlorophenol seeped from tanks and spills into the ground at the facility, creating pockets of contamination — almost like subterranean puddles. The agency launched a short-term cleanup in response because of the risk they posed to human and environmental health.

Pentachlorophenol is highly toxic to humans, with prolonged exposure potentially linked to cancer. It can also cause health effects ranging from eye irritation to kidney and liver inflammation, according to the EPA. 

Without current information from government agencies addressing J.H. Baxter’s pollution in the landfill and its potential health impacts, the risks remain unclear.

Lookout Eugene-Springfield asked independent researchers to examine DEQ’s 33-year-old preliminary assessment of the landfill site through the lens of modern-day science.

Matt Polizzotto runs the Soil and Water Lab at the University of Oregon. The earth sciences professor has been cited in more than 4,000 academic papers, and his research focuses on how contamination affects people and the environment.

While Politzzoto has not studied the landfill and could not speak specifically to it, he offered general observations.

“Oregon, and around the world of locations where toxic waste has been put into the ground, different contaminants can migrate underground,” he said. “Just like we can see water moving in streams and rivers and we can tell what direction water is moving underground … The question becomes: Will they migrate into a location that could lead to some kind of exposure to people?

“The data are old … There are a lot of unknowns.” 

Land of two legacies 

Lane County closed and capped the Day Island Landfill in 1974, the year Steve Prefontaine returned home from a race in Finland, inspired to bring the Scandinavian design of bark-covered trails to Eugene. 

Nearly a year later, a grieving community came together to fulfill Prefontaine’s vision after a car crash killed him May 31, 1975, at age 24.

“People who used the hills, streets, and byways of the Eugene area for jogging, and his many other admirers and friends wanted to do something in memory of their track hero,” Bill Bowerman, coach and Nike co-founder, wrote in an essay reflecting on the efforts. 

Bowerman described the “three short months” that elapsed between Pre’s death and the Labor Day dedication. Lane County provided the space, a local wood mill donated cedar and Douglas fir shavings and the Oregon Track Club helped haul it to the trail. 

Nike and other donors put up much of the cash for the nearly $40,000 development, with the county paying $6,000. Others volunteered, and in their labor of love, many did not know about the landfill waste that lay beneath.

To this day, many in the running community still do not know. Lookout spoke to many users of the trail. Frequent trail users we spoke with did not want to go on the record, either because they were hearing about it for the first time or because they do not fully understand what is at risk.

Developments of such magnitude like Pre’s Trail now generally require assessments of impact under laws like the National Environmental Policy Act.

Such assessments would have redirected how the development of the trail happened, said Mason Leavitt, a GIS analyst and coordinator with the environmental justice group Beyond Toxics. Leavitt, who closely follows waste management in the region and recently advocated against expanding the Coffin Butte Landfill in Benton County, said landfills share a common trait: They all leak eventually. 

That includes climate-altering methane emissions as waste decomposes and leachate — liquids that can run off with rain. It’s why many landfills are monitored in perpetuity.

“When I look at this facility [Day’s Island Landfill and Pre’s Trail], I think about the larger conversation that Lane County and the Willamette Valley are having around waste management,” Leavitt said. 

“[It’s important for people to think about] the legacy of this place,” he said. “And think about the legacy that we’re currently creating in front of us, and how to better manage waste so that we’re not left with a ton of these sites to manage centuries down the line.”