Baxter sale would affect Eugene.

Byline: Randi Bjornstad The Register-Guard

Negotiations aimed at the purchase of a Washington state pole plant by a Canadian wood products company could lead to a loss of jobs in a Eugene wood-treatment plant.

Georgia Baxter, president and chief executive officer of J.H. Baxter & Co., confirmed Thursday that her company may sell its pole-producing plant in Arlington, Wash., to the Stella-Jones Corp. as soon as March 1.

"Nothing's a done deal - we're still in the due diligence phase," Baxter said from the company's headquarters in San Mateo, Calif. But, she said, "We do a lot of our pole treatment business out of Eugene; if the sale goes through, we won't be treating poles in Eugene anymore."

Pole treatment makes up about 70 percent of the business conducted at the Eugene creosoting plant, which means that layoffs "could be significant," Baxter acknowledged.

However, even if the sale of the pole-making factory in Washington goes through, Eugene's J.H. Baxter plant will continue to treat wood for railroad ties, pilings and other uses, Baxter said.

Gary Hunt, plant manager at the J.H. Baxter & Co. facility at 85 Baxter St. in west Eugene, said the firm employs 49 people locally.

J.H. Baxter operates in 14 states, with businesses that include wood treatment, chemical licensing and timberland management, according to the company's Web site.

Its locations are clustered on the West Coast, with pole production and treatment in Arlington; treatment facilities in Eugene and Weed, Calif.; and sales offices in Eugene, San Mateo and Reno, Nev.

The company has outlets in Idaho, California, Nevada, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Oklahoma, Michigan, Indiana, Alabama, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.

Baxter's coexistence with residents in the Eugene area has not been an easy one. During 2004, the Lane Regional Air Protection Agency logged 713 complaints from 100 households near the creosoting facility. The company has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to mitigate the effects of the fumes it emits.

Baxter declined to divulge the value of the sale to Stella-Jones or further plans for restructuring the work performed by her company. However, a news release issued in November from the Stella-Jones headquarters in Montreal, said sales from Baxter's "pole product group" totaled about $30 million in U.S. currency in 2005.