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QuickTake:
The Whilamut Citizen Planning Committee is asking the city of Eugene and Lane County to resume soil and water testing in Alton Baker Park at the site of the old Day Island Landfill, citing concerns about “the possible presence of hazardous materials.”
A planning committee is asking the city of Eugene and Lane County to resume environmental monitoring along part of Pre’s Trail, citing Lookout Eugene-Springfield investigations into a chemical disposal area that accepted toxic waste from J.H. Baxter & Co., the shuttered wood-treatment company whose west Eugene facility is now a Superfund site.
The Whilamut Citizen Planning Committee, a joint advisory body created by the Eugene City Council and the Willamalane Park and Recreation District, monitors improvements and restoration in Alton Baker Park near the Interstate 5 bridge. At their quarterly meeting Jan. 22, the committee approved the following motion:
“The Citizen Planning Committee for the Whilamut Natural Area of Alton Baker Park asks the City of Eugene and Lane County to test the soil and water in and near the former Day Island Landfill and to publicly release the test results. This request is made in light of publicly available information regarding the possible presence of hazardous materials in the former landfill, now part of Alton Baker Park.”
By approving the motion, the committee directed that the statement be forwarded to city and county officials.
Eugene Parks and Open Space Supervisor Shelly Miller, the committee’s liaison, shared the motion with the city manager’s office, which requested a formal memo. A board member from the Whilamut citizen committee may also be asked to give public comment at a City Council meeting.
Day Island Landfill timeline
Lane County closed the Day Island Landfill in 1974, the same year Steve Prefontaine returned from Scandinavian races with a vision for bark-covered trails in Eugene. After his death, the community later built the trail in his memory, but without the environmental oversight that likely would be required today.
About 2 feet of soil separates people who use the trail from the landfill beneath.
It’s where an estimated 950,000 tons of waste lie buried, including thousands of gallons of “unspecified oil,” at least 1,400 gallons of which came from J.H. Baxter.
State and county officials have told Lookout Eugene-Springfield that the cap over the top of the waste protects public health, but their records note areas with less than a 1-foot cap and no liner to control how water moves through the landfill and to limit the spread of contaminants.
Further, Environmental Protection Agency records stored for years in Washington, D.C., archives and released to Lookout Eugene-Springfield through the Freedom of Information Act show contaminants broke through the surface and may be leaking into a small pond near the Willamette River.
The pond sits south of a monitoring well that detected chemicals, including pentachlorophenol, that were used by J.H. Baxter.
Those findings led the EPA to consider whether the landfill should be designated its own Superfund site, but it did not qualify. Fewer than 1% of known toxic sites receive Superfund status, and the landfill’s exclusion did not eliminate concerns.
As the lead investigator in 1993 wrote, “The site does have environmental problems associated with it.”
In 1992, the state Department of Environmental Quality added the Day Island Landfill to the state’s list of contaminated properties, a designation meant to prompt Lane County, the responsible agency for the landfill, to take action.
The EPA, the Oregon DEQ and Lane County either have not monitored the landfill site for decades or can’t find records of such work since the early 1990s.
Next steps
Officials say studies conducted in the 1980s and 1990s found the site posed a “low risk,” but those reviews were not conclusive, and no final clearance letter has ruled out the need for future action.
Such a final clearance is what members of the Whilamut Citizen Planning Committee say they want. To obtain it, Lane County would need to enter the Oregon DEQ’s Voluntary Cleanup Program and complete a process designed to determine whether the site poses ongoing risks.
“There’s a very good reason for [due diligence], and the press is responsible for calling it to the public’s attention,” said committee member David Sonnichsen at the winter meeting. “And we’re responding to that.”
The committee’s next meeting is scheduled for April. It has yet to be determined whether a formal memo, and potential public comment to City Council, will be sent before or after that meeting.
