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The federal Environmental Protection Agency is now conducting an expedited cleanup at the facility that it hopes will eventually end the need for stormwater treatment.
Earlier this year, J.H. Baxter & Co. in west Eugene stopped running its stormwater system that treats contamination before it flows out of the facility and into a canal that lines a residential area, according to a summary of a state-convened meeting recently made public.
Water sampling and reporting also lapsed during the three months company President Georgia Baxter-Krause served her 90-day prison sentence late last year for violating environmental laws, according to the meeting summary.
Contamination includes the chemical pentachlorophenol, exposure to which is associated with cancer risks.
The summary is from a Jan. 15 meeting with the J.H. Baxter Community Engagement Core Team, a virtual meeting space convened by the state Department of Environmental Quality and the Oregon Health Authority a couple of times each year.
The meetings allow activists and neighborhood leaders to learn about the cleanup at the J.H. Baxter Superfund site.
Lookout Eugene-Springfield’s requests to attend the recurring meetings have been declined repeatedly over the last year. DEQ posted the Jan. 15 meeting summary to its website Oct. 5 after Lookout Eugene-Springfield requested a copy.
When the facility shut down the system, it redirected untreated water to tanks for storage. Those tanks eventually overflowed during a storm, but the water did not leave the site, DEQ spokesperson Dylan Darling said in a follow-up email Oct. 15. A similar shut-off and water overflow happened in January and February 2025, he said.
The stormwater system was “back up and running” Jan. 21, according to the meeting summary.
The summary also states that J.H. Baxter had issues with water sampling and reporting while Baxter-Krause was in prison, after the lab doing the sampling stopped because of lack of payment.
“DEQ does not have reason to believe that discharge is outside of permitted limits. However, they expect that (J.H. Baxter) sampling and reports will be back up and running and in compliance with her permit in the near future,” the summary states.
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. The company’s state permit sets pollution limits on what the system discharges and requires regular sampling to show it is meeting them.
The monitoring and treatment lapses are violations of its permit, and DEQ’s compliance office is reviewing the case for possible penalties. J.H. Baxter still owes the state civil penalties for its 2022 violation of the same permit, the year the company stopped its operations at the site.
Baxter-Krause was released from a federal penitentiary in Washington on Dec. 18. Neither she, her company, nor her attorneys could be reached for comment by time of publication.
This fall, the EPA launched another round of expedited cleanup Sept. 14 at the facility. Part of the agency’s goal in its multimillion-dollar effort is to rely less on the stormwater system, according to a press release.
During an interview Sept. 16, Lookout asked EPA leaders to clarify the reasons for the focus on the stormwater system as part of its expedited cleanup. None spoke about the system shutting down earlier in the year.
Emma Pokon, the EPA’s Region 10 administrator, said she had no indication the systems were “struggling.”
“As long as they are operated and maintained appropriately, they are treating the water before it leaves the site,” she said.
Randy Nattis, EPA’s on-scene coordinator in the agency’s Region 10 office for the Pacific Northwest, said he didn’t have concerns about the functionality of the treatment system. He also told Lookout that, based on his knowledge, J.H. Baxter was meeting its permit requirements to turn in sampling.
“The hope is that when we’re done doing this work, there won’t be a need to do stormwater treatment anymore,” he said.
In a follow-up email, EPA spokesperson Alice Corcoran said Oct. 8 that the stormwater system outage earlier this year did not play into the agency’s decision to activate its expedited cleanup, called a Time Critical Removal Action. This expedited cleanup is a distinct process that is operating in tandem with the long-term cleanup under the Superfund program.
“The (Time Critical Removal Action) is separate from the current operation and maintenance of the storm water and groundwater treatment systems. Operation of those systems will continue to be Ms. Baxter’s responsibility” during the expedited cleanup, Corcoran said.
As of late September, crews contracted under the Time Critical Removal Action excavated 829 cubic yards of contaminated material, the equivalent to 60 to 80 dump trucks loads. Material will be taken to an EPA-approved disposal site in Utah.
