Traffic passes by the old J.H. Baxter wood treatment plant in the Bethel neighborhood of Eugene, Ore., on Mar. 7, 2026. The facility operated for roughly 80 years, and in its final decades was the constant target of complaints, probes and fines tied to its emissions. It was listed as a Superfund site in July 2025.
Brian Bull / KLCC
The last of two lawsuits filed against the J.H. Baxter company was resolved Friday. No damages were awarded and plaintiffs have no opportunity to refile litigation related to its shuttered Eugene plant.
Judge Mustafa Kasubhai of the U.S. District Court of Oregon granted a motion to dismiss Hart et al v. J.H. Baxter et al with prejudice at the request of the plaintiffs and their attorneys.
The lead plaintiff, Miles Hart, is a former J.H. Baxter maintenance lead who says he was fired in 2014 for being a whistleblower. He said while the company was once a revered name in the wood products industry — creating treated railroad ties and telephone poles since the 1940s — it eventually cut corners and neglected to uphold standard environmental practices, including improper use of retorts to evaporate hazardous wastewater.
In its last 20 years of operation, complaints about the Bethel-area plant steadily rose from neighbors.
“That plant was a very, very old plant,” Hart told KLCC. “It had been there a very long time. And so as EPA standards and our understanding of chemicals and treatment and stuff like that improved over time, they never really truly stepped up to the plate to adhere to those standards.”
At one point, the lawsuit — and another one, Alanis-Bell et al vs. J.H. Baxter et al, also filed in 2021 — were elevated to a class-action level, given the potentially thousands of people who were affected by the J.H. Baxter plant’s toxins and emissions. Earlier this year though, federal judges decertified them both back to civil suits given the company’s insolvency.
Hart said he realized there was no point to continue the lawsuit, given J.H. Baxter’s lack of assets.
In April 2025, a judge ordered the company to pay a $1.5 million penalty, and sentenced its president, Georgia Baxter-Krause, to 90 days in prison. By this time, practically every J.H. Baxter facility was shut down and only a skeleton crew remained at the Eugene plant, which shuttered in January 2022.
The property itself was designated a Superfund site in July 2025, which means extensive cleanup by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for many years, and investing millions — if not billions — of dollars before it can become viable property again.
Other J.H. Baxter sites have been deemed Superfund sites in the company’s nearly 130 years of operation. This includes a wood-treatment facility that it operated in The Dalles from 1959 to 1987, and a wood-treatment facility in Weed, California that was listed in 1989 for heavy concentrations of creosote, pentachlorophenol, and other chemicals.
“There’s nothing to gain. It would just be beating a dead horse, you know? So, it’s sad,” said Hart. He added that the prison sentence for Baxter-Krause was a “slap on the wrist” given the history of noxious odors and concerning dioxin contamination in Bethel area yards and gardens. Hart himself lived less than a mile away from the J.H. Baxter wood treatment plant.
“I loved to garden,” he said. “Flowers, vegetables, all that stuff. And I couldn’t let my kids run through the backyard or pick directly out of the garden out of fear of what they were doing over there.”
In this Oct. 4, 2023 photo, contractors with Sperry Tree Care feed trees and bushes into a wood chipper outside a Bethel residence. Crews began taking down roughly 17 trees from homes that texted high for dioxins in their soil. All were near the J.H. Baxter wood treatment facility.
Brian Bull / KLCC
Hart suggests that Baxter-Krause could have reserves “squirreled away somewhere,” but in terms of payout from this experience, it’s that future generations won’t have to live with the J.H. Baxter facility operating anymore.
“That plant won’t exist there, and this stuff happens all across the United States, across the world,” said Hart. “You know it’ll continue to happen. We’ve just got to use our voice as a people when you see something wrong, stand up and say something.”
Laura Sheets, a Detroit-based attorney who represented the plaintiffs in Hart et al v. J.H. Baxter et al, did not return requests for comment regarding Judge Kasubhai’s dismissal of the case Friday. But in a Feb. 12 interview with KLCC after the case was decertified back to a civil suit, she expressed regret that more couldn’t be done.
“We wish that we were able to achieve a different result because we absolutely believe in the claims of the people in this case,” said Sheets. “We’re going to hope and rely on the Superfund designation to hopefully bring some relief to the immediate neighborhood and for the remaining residents in the area. They hopefully have some consolation that this facility is no longer operating.”
Last month, Judge Ann Aiken closed the other civil suit, Bell-Alanis et al vs. J.H. Baxter et al, ordering the company to pay four named plaintiffs $200,000.
An attorney with that case, Chris Nidel, told KLCC in October 2025 that he was disappointed that chances of a class-action settlement were poor.
“Unfortunately, as the cliché goes, you can’t get blood from a stone,” he said. “So the community is left holding the bag for decades of bad acts.”
A skeleton with a message
Rebecca Hoffman (standing) poses with a plastic skeleton decoration on March 7, 2026. Last fall, her family made a Halloween skeleton decoration crawling out of a barrel labeled "J.H. Baxter." She said with the plant closed and soil removed from her gardens, she feels a "little safer."
Brian Bull / KLCC
Rebecca Hoffman lives across the street from the shuttered J.H. Baxter facility in Bethel. She said the state Department of Environmental Quality removed at least a foot’s worth of soil from her residence, given the high levels of dioxins found in local yards and gardens.
“I guess I feel a little safer,” she told KLCC. “Of course, this area has never been great because we’re so close.”
Hoffman said before Roosevelt Boulevard was put in, her street was the primary entrance for trucks and other traffic, and most houses were for company employees.
She and her family have adopted a gallows-humor approach to living across from one of the area’s most controversial facilities. For instance, last Halloween they put out a homemade yard decoration: a large metal barrel spraypainted green with “J.H. Baxter” painted on the side with a skeleton crawling out of it.
“We try to have our fun,” said Hoffman. “Of course, I’m convinced Baxter-Krause has some money squirreled away, so it’s too bad the suits are done.”
KLCC reached out to Baxter-Krause for comment on the resolution of the two cases, and what her plans are now following her release from a Seattle-area federal prison in December.
Brian Bull is a reporter with KLCC. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.
It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.
