Oregon Wood Treatment Facility and its President Fined $1.5 Million for Clean Air Act Violations
A $1.5 million penalty has been imposed on two companies linked to the J.H. Baxter wood treatment plant in Eugene, along with their president, for breaching the Clean Air Act.
Company President Gets Jail Time
The court also sentenced the companies’ president, Georgia Baxter-Krause (62), of Deschutes, to three months in federal prison and one year of supervised release, and ordered the companies to serve five years probation.
Boiled Hazardous Waste Discharged Into the Air Across the Street from Residential Homes
Adam Gustafson, the Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division at the Department of Justice, informed the court that the J.H. Baxter facility had committed violations on over 100 separate days when it had illegally and knowingly discharged boiled hazardous waste into the air, across the street from residential properties.
He also said the companies’ president had made false statements about the practice.
According to court records, the wastewater generated by wood preserving processes was hazardous, and while the company operated a legal treatment process to evaporate the waste, excess hazardous water was transferred to retorts where it was boiled to reduce volume before being labeled as hazardous waste and transferred offsite for disposal.
Court documents also revealed that during the illegal wastewater treatment, all vents on the retort were opened, allowing hazardous pollutants to be discharged into the air. The facility did not have a hazardous waste treatment permit.
When state inspectors uncovered the unauthorized activity, they were misled by Baxter-Krause who gave them false information on two separate occasions.
The investigation found that J.H. Baxter had boiled hazardous process wastewater in wood treatment retorts on 136 days between January to October 2019.
The two companies — J.H. Baxter & Co. Inc. and J.H. Baxter & Co., a California Limited Partnership — had previously pleaded guilty to charges of illegally treating hazardous waste and knowingly violating the Clean Air Act’s regulations for hazardous air pollutants.
Georgia Baxter-Krause had previously admitted guilt to two charges of making false statements that violated the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the federal law overseeing hazardous waste regulation.
The case was investigated by the Environmental Crimes Task Force (ECTF), a District of Oregon initiative that identifies and prosecutes environmental, public lands, and wildlife crimes.
ECTF leverages the resources of federal, state, and local regulatory agencies and law enforcement to protect human health, safeguard natural resources and wildlife, and hold violators accountable.