More dioxin found at Trainsong Park, cleanup may grow in scope

More dioxin contamination at Trainsong Park could push the cleanup far below the surface, keeping one of west Eugene’s most used green spaces out of reach while crews work around a problem that proved deeper than expected.

The 5-acre park at 2775 Edison Street, just off Highway 99, was temporarily closed in January 2022 after dioxins were unexpectedly found in the soil. It has only been partially reopened since, and the latest testing shows the issue reaches down to about 24 inches in most cases, complicating plans for a full reopening.

That depth matters because dioxins can cause cancer, and the Oregon Health Authority’s Environmental Health Assessment Program said levels at Trainsong Park exceeded both non-cancer and cancer-based comparison values. State health staff said they would issue a separate health consultation, underscoring that this is more than a landscaping problem for a neighborhood park.

The City of Eugene said the contamination may have been imported before the city bought the property in the early 1980s. EPA grant materials describe a longer history on the site: the land was first used for agriculture, redeveloped for residential use in the mid-1940s, and became a municipal park in the mid-1980s. That layered history helps explain why officials are now treating the site as a brownfield redevelopment project rather than a routine park repair.

Cleanup planning has already moved through several steps. The city brought in Maul Foster & Alongi, Inc. in late summer 2023 to evaluate options, then applied for a Brownfields Cleanup Grant in November 2023. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded $1,526,847 for Trainsong Park in May 2024. City draft materials call for excavating the top six inches of soil in areas with high dioxin levels and replacing it with clean soil, while other planning documents say the city is working with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and EPA to finalize the timeline.

The city expects cleanup work to be completed in summer 2026 and hopes to reopen the park before the end of the year. But the newly identified depth of contamination means crews may need to isolate polluted soil more carefully and build a two-foot buffer between the contaminated layer and the surface.

DEQ also took samples from nearby residential yards to see whether dioxins had spread beyond the park. City officials met with residents last week, and the broader west Eugene context, including a long contamination history in the River Road and Trainsong neighborhoods, is likely to keep pressure on officials to show the cleanup is matching the problem underground, not just the problem visible at the surface.