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Cleanup crews are back at the polluted site on a fast-track to remove contaminated soil in the coming months. The expedited cleanup effort is happening in parallel with the site's long-term Superfund process, with more sampling planned this fall.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency has started a second round of expedited cleanup work at the shuttered J.H. Baxter & Co. facility in west Eugene — this time focusing on hazardous materials underground.
The EPA kicked off work to remove contaminated soil Tuesday, Sept. 14. Part of the agency’s goal is to rely less on a stormwater system that has been filtering runoff from the site for decades. That runoff eventually flows into Roosevelt Canal, which borders a residential area.
Nearly 10,000 people live within a mile of the mothballed J.H. Baxter facility, located on Roosevelt Boulevard. Workers there formerly used pesticides to treat wood products like telephone poles. In July 2025, the EPA designated J.H. Baxter as a Superfund site, unlocking federal funding for long-term cleanup.
Fewer than 1% of known toxic sites nationwide receive the level of federal attention that Superfund status brings.
At J.H. Baxter, two distinct processes of the Superfund program are happening in tandem: time-sensitive removal actions and long-term remedial actions:
- The expedited cleanup is part of the time-sensitive removal action, which addresses contamination that poses an immediate threat to human health or the environment and must begin within six months.
- The Superfund process consists of long-term remedial actions, and includes plans for dealing with contamination for years to come.
The cost of both expedited cleanups at the site is about $26 million, about $13 million each. Budgets for the full Superfund process have not been made publicly available.
The EPA’s first removal action, launched in 2024, focused on the facility’s above-ground tanks and structures. Crews dismantled kiln-like silos where J.H. Baxter treated wood products with chemicals. The EPA hauled more than 750,000 gallons of waste off the property — work that wrapped up in January, months later than planned, due to limited capacity at an EPA-approved disposal site.
Meanwhile, in February, crews began sampling under the Superfund program’s long-term process — part of an investigation and study that will eventually lead to a long-range cleanup plan.
They drilled 45 feet into the ground, and when they pulled the cores out, they saw thick, oily contamination. That was enough evidence for the EPA to request another round of time-critical removal actions.
Also, that sampling confirmed contaminated soil at the site was getting into stormwater, which a treatment system was filtering before it entered a ditch that flows into the Roosevelt Canal. The contamination includes the chemical pentachlorphenol, exposure to which is associated with cancer risks.
Public records show the treatment system has been operating since 1997, and at least one J.H. Baxter employee still works at the facility to help maintain it. Such treatment plants and facilities must follow state regulation with a permit to demonstrate they are discharging under set pollution limits. The facility hasn’t been in violation of this permit since 2022, the year J.H. Baxter stopped its operations at the site.
In an interview with Lookout Eugene-Springfield, Randy Nattis, EPA’s on-scene coordinator in the agency’s Region 10 office for the Pacific Northwest, said he doesn’t have concerns about the functionality of the treatment system. The expedited cleanup, he said, is an opportunity to use available dollars to address contaminated soil from a facility that operated for 80 years.
Baxter “was set up and maintained before many environmental regulations were in place, before many of the best management practices were in place, and there’s a lot of source material in the ground,” he said. “The hope is that when we’re done doing this work, there won’t be a need to do stormwater treatment anymore.”
There isn’t a present threat to the community, according to a press release the EPA published Thursday, Sept. 17.
In the interview, Emma Pokon, the EPA’s Region 10 administrator, said J.H. Baxter is becoming a national example of how the federal agency, partners and contractors can work more efficiently with Superfund projects.
“We want to do the full evaluation and ensure that we have a reasoned approach to what the full suite of measures needs to be,” Pokon said. “But there are going to be some things when our experts are there and they’re seeing the level of contamination, and they know this is something we are going to have to remove at the end of the day. So rather than waiting, let’s get it done now.”
This approach aligns with the agency’s new “Superfund Solutions Initiative” announced in June to accelerate cleanups. On its website about the initiative, the agency said it wants to deliver “both economic and community health benefits much sooner.”
Pokon, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in February 2025, said that the work leading up to the initiative came from both longtime EPA employees and new leadership.
At J.H. Baxter, boots are on the ground now through the spring under the short-term cleanup. In addition to removing soil, they will be taking out contaminated pads on which chemically treated wood dripped while it was drying.
Meanwhile, the team behind long-term cleanup is preparing for off-site sampling. According to an initial assessment, preliminary sampling indicates contamination exists in the residential neighborhood to the north of the facility and in water downstream.
The sampling, planned for early November, will test groundwater, surface water, sediment and possibly residential soil.
