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While the Environmental Protection Agency weighs Superfund status for the defunct J.H. Baxter site in West Eugene, residents are urging the city to revise its land-use codes to prevent another pollution disaster. Among them is a mother turned advocate, whose child survived cancer. People can share their own experiences in a city survey through May 18.
A few years ago, Arjorie Arberry-Baribeault was living out her childhood dream: turning beauty shop play into a real salon just down the road from her home in West Eugene. She had no plans to become an environmental justice activist.
Then her daughter, Zion, got sick. She was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma — a cancer that weakens the body’s ability to fight infections — in 2018.
As Zion lost her hair, Arberry-Baribeault’s motivation to style others’ faded. Instead, she started asking questions and looking for answers.
“It was not uncommon to see the pollution or smell the pollution,” said Arberry-Baribeault, who now works with the nonprofit Beyond Toxics. “That was just how it was. We lived in West Eugene, and we shared our space with polluters.”
Around the time of her child’s diagnosis, workers at the nearby wood treatment plant J.H. Baxter were illegally boiling off toxic wastewater into the air. They did this for at least 136 days during 2019, according to an investigation from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Since the early 2000s, community members and teachers in West Eugene have been contacting Beyond Toxics with concerns about pollution and children’s health.
That EPA investigation led to an April 22 trial, where a federal judge sentenced the company and its president, Georgia Baxter-Krause, to fines and prison time for knowingly violating the Clean Air Act. Even though the criminal case is closed, the EPA still has months, possibly years, of work ahead, depending on whether the site is designated as a Superfund site.
As federal efforts unfold, local work is progressing in parallel. Last month, the city of Eugene opened a survey as part of an effort to refine land-use codes to consider public health criteria for industrial development. Leading up to the May 18 survey deadline, Beyond Toxics is hosting a community meeting Thursday to educate Trainsong and Bethel residents about what they are seeing around them and how to make their voices heard.
What is the city doing about it?
Over the past month, the city of Eugene’s planning and development department held two public workshops on the Public Health Standards project — both scheduled around noon in downtown. While some felt the timing and location of the workshops weren’t accessible, a few residents were able to attend.
Among them was Robin Bloomgarden, who lives just blocks from J.H. Baxter and is part of the local group Active Bethel Community. She has previously described her neighborhood to Lookout Eugene-Springfield as a chemical soup.
Bloomgarden spoke to city planners during the April 24 session, asking them to consider what West Eugene residents already endure.
“Do not add to the pollution and the giant stuff that’s next to housing,” she said. “It’s hard enough that people live there, don’t allow it. Like the Baxter site, don’t allow another one of those things.”
During the workshop, land-use supervisor Reid Verner acknowledged the link between pollution, public health, and livelihoods. He presented a zoning map showing that some of the city’s heaviest industrial activity is concentrated along the southern edge of Bethel’s residential areas.
“Land-use patterns are closely tied to neighborhoods’ livability and economic opportunities,” Verner said. “In Eugene, we know that historic development patterns have led to some areas of current conflict, where in particular residential areas are next to industrial areas.”
Reid plans to present a summary of the survey feedback to the city council during a June 18 work session at noon. Based on that discussion, potential land use changes could be drafted for adoption into city code.
The future of Baxter
The EPA proposed last September to add the J.H. Baxter site into the Superfund program — a designation that would open up even more federal dollars for cleanup. A decision could come as early as this spring, but like many federal programs, it may be delayed by uncertainty amid changes under the Trump administration.
President Trump’s proposed budget, released May 2, cut $254 million from the Superfund program. Lookout Eugene-Springfield asked the EPA Region 10, which oversees Oregon, what this could mean for J.H. Baxter.
“As with any change in administration, the agency is reviewing each grant program to ensure it is an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars and to understand how those programs align with Administration priorities,” wrote public affairs specialist Alice Corcoran in an email. “The agency’s review is ongoing.”
Corcoran said Trump’s proposal shouldn’t affect the EPA’s short-term cleanup, which has been underway since August. The agency has been dismantling tanks at the J.H. Baxter facility and plans to complete this work by fall. But if the site isn’t designated a Superfund site, funding to address the chemicals that have leeched into the ground over nearly eight decades of Baxter’s operations could fall short.
That would leave a gap for the cleanup work that the state would be challenged to fill.
“If EPA were unable to proceed with work at this site, [Department of Environmental Quality] would be unable to fund a cleanup of this size without significant additional funding from the Oregon Legislature,” said public affairs specialist Dylan Darling in an email.
So far, the EPA has spent $11 million on cleanup, while the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has contributed another $2.9 million. J.H. Baxter owes the state over $375,000 in civil penalties and interest from a 2022 settlement—and now faces more than $1.5 million in criminal fines as well.
The criminal case did not establish a direct link between plant emissions and local health issues. However, the judge noted that two civil lawsuits making their way through the courts could eventually determine that connection.
Speaking out
Arberry-Baribeault, whose daughter survived, has never received any formal acknowledgment from J.H. Baxter or government agencies about what her family experienced. She’s sought justice by speaking out and by helping others understand how to do the same.
Thursday, Arberry-Baribeault who now lives in Portland will join city staff and community members at a public meeting focused on proposed health criteria for industrial development. The Beyond Toxics event will be held at the Lion of Judah Community Center, 2600 Wood Ave., at 6 p.m.
She supports refining the land use code because she — and many of her neighbors — believe that with stronger public health standards in place and better coordination among government agencies, this human-made disaster could have been prevented.
“This catastrophe that’s happened, that is J.H. Baxter, really showed there is the ability for them [the local government] to care,” said Arberry-Baribeault. “That ability needs to translate into the public health development standards, because if that were the case, then a J.H. Baxter wouldn’t have been able to do what they were doing for decades, right?”
