Oklahoma has reached a new settlement with all six remaining poultry companies in a decades-long pollution lawsuit. The new plan could replace a federal judge's order, which the companies balked at, and earlier proposed settlements, which the judge rejected.
On Monday, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond announced his office had reached another agreement with the potential to end the 21-year-old lawsuit over the effects of poultry waste in the Illinois River Watershed.
All six defendants have signed onto the settlement, which amounts to nearly $44 million. That includes $41.6 million for a cleanup fund, $1.9 million to pay for a compliance auditor and $420,000 in penalties.
The companies also agree to steadily reduce the fraction of poultry litter spread in the watershed over the course of seven years.
In a press release, Drummond said the latest move allows the parties to move on from the dispute. He said the agreement protects the state's natural resources and supports the poultry industry.
"It protects Oklahoma's water, provides certainty for our poultry industry, and shows that difficult problems can be solved through persistence and good-faith negotiation," Drummond said in the release. "When the court asked us to strengthen the agreement, we went back to work and reached a better result."
For the settlement to take effect, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals would need to approve it and vacate a federal judge's earlier order.
The latest in a long lawsuit
Since 2005, the state and the poultry industry has been embroiled in a lawsuit over agriculture waste from poultry polluting the Illinois River Watershed. Although the legal litany has dragged on for a while, it has picked up in recent years.
In early 2023, Oklahoma Northern District Judge Gregory Frizzell ruled the companies did pollute the watershed and needed to make an agreement with the state to clean it up. That didn't happen.
Then in December 2025, Frizzell issued a judgment for how the poultry companies should clean up the watershed. The corporations then pushed back against that order.
Eventually, four of the companies and the state entered proposed settlements, which the judge rejected, saying they didn't effectively address the problems in the watershed.
With appeals pending, both poultry growers and environmental advocates have been in limbo. While growers have been worried about the industry moving out of eastern Oklahoma, environmentalists are worried about timely conservation work.
A new path forward?
The parties say the latest settlement provides funding support for remediation.
"In entering this settlement, the Parties are mindful of and seeking to minimize litigation risk, in particular risk of an adverse decision on appeal," the settlement reads.
The new settlement addresses some of Frizzell's criticisms of the agreements he rejected earlier this year. It implements one timeline and set of requirements for reducing poultry waste in the watershed that applies to all the companies. It requires the companies to pay penalties in line with what Frizzell included in his December order.
Unlike earlier agreements, the new settlement names an auditor who would oversee the companies' compliance: Oklahoma State University environmental scientist Scott Stoodley. The earlier plans would require further negotiation and approvals to appoint a special master.
In response to the most recent settlements, Stacy Simunek, president of the Oklahoma Farm Bureau, said in a statement members are pleased with it. Producers in the state, he said, are committed to voluntary environmental stewardship practices.
"The original lawsuit, filed in 2005, created uncertainty for family farmers and ranchers for more than two decades, and this agreement provides a way for Oklahoma farm and ranch families to continue their important work to feed Americans without being unnecessarily burdened," Simunek said.
He said the bureau appreciates the attorney general working with the poultry industry to reach a proposed solution that allows farmers to produce food and safeguards natural resources.
But a press release from Gov. Kevin Stitt's office says the proposed settlement would make a regulatory checkerboard and "incentives for further sue and settle tactics" against the agriculture industry.
"It is a shame that State Attorney General Gentner Drummond put out family-owned farmers through years of uncertainty and threatened to ultimately reach the agreement I called for him to negotiate long ago," Stitt said in the statement.
In 2024, Stitt fired Ken McQueen who served as Oklahoma Secretary of Energy and Environment for attending an evidentiary hearing on the lawsuit.
This report was produced by the Oklahoma Public Media Exchange, a collaboration of public media organizations. Help support collaborative journalism by donating at the link at the top of this webpage.
