My neighbor is a Superfund site: J.H. Baxter’s pollution lingers near thousands 

Kersti Landeck bought another load of bagged soil this spring for her garden, which lies beneath the fruit trees her late brother-in-law ate from. 

Her yard is contaminated with the same pollution as the Superfund site next door. So, she puts her starter plants in plastic gallon buckets and in wooden raised beds.  

“The whole time he lived here, he was eating the Italian plums every fall,” said Landeck, reflecting on her brother-in-law James Irwin, who lived in the house for 15 years. “Wildlife has eaten those plums, and they’re most likely toxic.”

Irwin died in 2024 after developing prostate and melanoma cancers. Before he got sick, he was a healthy man in his 70s, riding up to 20 miles a day — an American flag trailing behind his bike on the Fern Ridge path across the street from J.H. Baxter. 

The smell was obvious. The health effects were not. 

J.H. Baxter treated wood products like telephone poles with toxic chemicals meant to keep organic things like fungus from living on it. The company did this by applying tar-like creosote and waxy pentachlorophenol in kiln-like silos — a mixture that at high heat can produce dioxins. 

In 2019, regulators found egregious mishandling of these chemicals, including spills that leached into the ground and emissions that lofted over nearby homes. Two years later J.H. Baxter stopped its operation, and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) sent Irwin a letter about dioxins in his yard. 

“DEQ has determined that cleanup of the soil on your property is needed to reduce the long-term health risks from dioxins in your soil,” said the letter in a packet that included a fact sheet explaining dioxins, that continued “exposure to (dioxins) occur mainly from eating food that contains the chemicals.” 

Irwin, a Navy veteran, died before a cleanup happened. Still waiting for a cleanup is Landeck, who moved into the house to support his daughter — her niece — Kat Anderson, who has kidney failure. 

“We can’t really say anything directly about Jim’s illness, or what Kat might be dealing with. It doesn’t make sense to chase that now,” Landeck said. “The frustration is that they (regulators) didn’t come and do what they were supposed to do.” 

Landeck is among nearly 10,000 people who live within a mile of J.H. Baxter, where the Environmental Protection Agency has taken over as lead agency from state regulators. The transition means more planning before any additional cleanup — action that could be years away.

Kyle and Emily Meyer’s house nearby was one of seven households that DEQ followed through on, sending in contractors who excavated contaminated soil and replaced it with clean fill. 

But the Meyers said some of their neighbors were left behind and still await cleanups.

But they, too, are left without closure after Kyle Meyer’s mother Pat Coppens recently died, uncertain whether pollution played any role. For answers, they just have a packet — similar to what Irwin received — which includes data-heavy reports with little accessible explanation. 

“I don’t know what any of this means. I’m not a scientist,” said Emily Meyer with the report in her hands, pointing to the rows of numbers and chemical compounds. The materials pair technical data with broad, rudimentary guidance. 

“Like, ‘wipe your shoes before you get in the house, wash your hands if you work in the garden,’” she said. “It’s f****** condescending.”  

Dioxins downstream of J.H. Baxter 

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has yet to fully illuminate the extent of the Baxter pollution to those people living in the shadow of one of the nation’s newest Superfund sites.

Lookout Eugene-Springfield reviewed a 3,000-page consultant assessment compiling dozens of soil samples — from dry land and in waterways — that informed the EPA’s decision to prioritize federal dollars for long-term cleanup at the site.

The 2024 assessment includes findings such as: 

• A map showing 15 miles of surface water downstream of J.H. Baxter and how drainage channels next to the facility converge into Amazon Creek at Meadowlark Prairie. 
• “Site-attributable” dioxin compounds in those drainage channels, according to samples. 
• Dioxin compounds “detected in sediment samples from Amazon Creek and Clear Lake.”

The assessment states in its conclusion: 

“Analytical results of samples collected indicate contamination on the facility property, in the residential neighborhood to the north, and within downstream sediment and surface waters.”

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has yet to fully illuminate the extent of the Baxter pollution to those people living in the shadow of one of the nation’s newest Superfund sites. Project manager Annie Christopher briefly mentioned that the EPA collected samples to look at how the contaminants may be moving off the property, but she did not discuss findings from the 2024 assessment. 

“It was premature to discuss specific waterways at that time and still is,” said EPA spokesperson Alice Corcoran, who added that the assessment “does not offer definitive conclusions about where contamination has migrated. That will come from a completed remedial investigation.” 

Corcoran declined Lookout’s request for an on-the-record walkthrough of the assessments with project managers for this article. But she and Christopher agreed to a limited interview with Lookout Eugene-Springfield about what is planned in the remedial investigation at a high level, after receiving questions in advance.

“There is quite a bit of data that already exists for this project,” Christopher said. “We are reviewing all of that with the contractor and we’ll be scoping out what the additional sampling is going to look like.” 

Over the winter, researchers dug 45 feet deep for new samples at J.H. Baxter. Results from the samples are pending and will determine if soil needs to be immediately removed or if it can safely be managed during a long-term cleanup. 

Another round of sampling is expected to begin this summer, though officials said they did not have a specific timeline. 

The sampling informs the remedial investigation, including a human health risk assessment, Corcoran said. 

Researcher’s take on health risks 

Without further explanation from regulators about health risks at this time, Lookout Eugene-Springfield brought questions to an independent scientist about what is already known regarding exposure to chemicals at J.H. Baxter. 

Water and air move around, and so often contaminants often move with them. Dr. Scott Bartell

Dr. Scott Bartell is an environmental health researcher and professor at University of California, Irvine, who served on the external review committee for the EPA’s toxicological review of pentachlorophenol. 

“In general, these toxic chemicals at Superfund sites and other contaminated sites are mobile. In the environment, these things move around because water and air move around, and so often contaminants often move with them,” Bartell said. 

Dioxins are present as contaminants in Agent Orange, the herbicide used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. Bartell pointed to decades of research identifying dioxins as known human carcinogens, with evidence linking exposure to prostate cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, soft tissue sarcoma and other illnesses. 

If people get sick from the chemicals, however, it often depends on the levels of contamination.

“That is always a question,” said Bartell. 

‘Stuck with bad soil’ 

The Meyers had some of the highest concentration of dioxins in their yard, according to documents from DEQ. Kyle Meyer attributes it to the trafficking of products with chemicals in and out of the facility for decades, even before Roosevelt Boulevard had a name. 

“Before the highway was there, the trucks with all the chemicals and whatnot came barreling down this road,” Meyer said. 

But he didn’t know that when he bought his house on Baxter Street in 2018. His real estate agent explained to him someone had died there, but nothing more, he said. 

The house met his needs: affordable, comfortable and close enough to help care for his mother, who had an incurable lung disease. He soon smelled a chemical odor. 

“[We were] having to come to grips with the fact that what it seemed like too good to be true, obviously, was. We moved into an area that has been an industrial dumping ground,” he said. 

Still, the move marked the start of a new chapter. For the first time in more than a decade, Meyer was living near his mother and brother. But that sense of beginning was cut short. 

In 2020, Kyle and Emily Meyer traveled to Iceland and got engaged. They called his mother from the airport to tell her. When they arrived home, they found she had died.

“We didn’t have much context of what was going on,” said Kyle Meyer, who received the packet in 2022. “I’ll always wonder. It didn’t help her live any longer, that’s for sure.” 

Meyer also wonders about how pollution may have affected his neighbors Irwin and Anderson, who now owns her father’s home. Anderson said uncontrolled diabetes caused her kidney failure, but her doctor told her chemical exposure could have worsened her condition. 

For years, the families breathed in naphthalene, a key chemical component of creosote, which became one of the most frequently detected toxins in air samples. 

The Oregon Health Authority and the Lane Regional Air Protection Agency conducted limited cancer investigations, but the data were insufficient to determine whether chemical exposure was making people sick. 

In a separate consultation published in 2024, the health authority evaluated dioxin levels in residential soil near J.H. Baxter. It concluded that 11 residences had elevated dioxin concentrations that met a threshold that it had identified for prioritizing yard clean-up. It also stated details that conflicted with what residents had heard before: 

• “Surface water and ground water near the Baxter facility will not harm people’s health.”
• “Fruits and vegetables take up only a very small fraction of dioxins from soil. Consuming home-grown produce that is thoroughly washed and peeled (for vegetables that grow under or on the ground) will have negligible amounts of dioxin and will not harm a person’s health.” 

Landeck and Anderson say they are not taking chances, but the state has stopped responding to them as they ask for help.

“We’re stuck with bad soil,” Landeck said. 

DEQ spokesperson Dylan Darling declined Lookout Eugene-Springfield’s request for an interview with project manager Sarah Eagle about Anderson’s property. 

“We used sampling data from various properties and selected seven properties with the highest levels of contamination,” he wrote in an email. 

But documents obtained through a public records request show the Andersons’ property fell within the median range of contamination levels and measured just three units lower than that of a neighbor who shares their fence line. That neighbor, who asked not to be named, said DEQ cleaned her yard.

“As DEQ noted, some of the documents that we sent you in response to your public records request are draft and contain potentially incorrect or incomplete information,” Darling said in his answers to follow-up questions asking for clarification. “We expect EPA to evaluate offsite contamination, including in the residential areas, as part of the Superfund project.” 

Cleanup action based on what the investigation finds won’t begin for at least two more years, according to Christopher and Corcoran, who reiterated to Lookout that they can’t speak on the topic until their remedial investigation is complete. 

Meanwhile, Landeck tries to focus on what is in her hands: planting carrots, radishes and lettuce in raised beds filled with store-bought soil.

The gardening is nurturing, Landeck said, but also aggravating, requiring her and Anderson to spend their own money on extra precautions just to feel safe rather than investing in home upgrades like fencing. Moving is likely not an option; contamination has likely affected the property’s value. They could further litigate, but that’s not in Landeck’s nature, she said. 

So she tends containers that have come to symbolize the limits placed on her home and her family’s future. 

“My choice is to grow plants,” she said. “It’s wanting that freedom, that choice.”