If you’ve spent enough time living in Oklahoma, you’ve probably heard about our little problem with chicken shit. If you haven’t, allow me to update you.
For years now Oklahoma has been home to a robust poultry industry. How robust, you ask? Robust enough that their shit is altering the chemistry of our water.
All the way back in 2005, Oklahoma attorney general Drew Edmonson filed a lawsuit against a host of industrial food producers, including Tyson Foods, Simmons Foods, and Cargill. The case sat in the courts for nearly two decades before Judge Gregory Frizzell ruled in Oklahoma’s favor. According to reporting by the nonprofit news outlet The Frontier, Frizzell ruled that “the companies knowingly contributed to pollution in the Illinois River, which allowed phosphorus to flow into the river causing algae blooms, diminished water clarity, and other environmental harms.”
This is all to say that poultry companies have quite literally been using our home as a toilet. If that weren’t bad enough, last June Judge Frizzell ruled against the poultry companies again, this time affirming that their practices have not changed in the two decades since the issue was joined.
Attorney General Gentner Drummond has now filed a proposed final judgment, calling for maximum fines to be levied against the poultry companies for every day they have been polluting. This would add up to millions of dollars per company. The money could be used to clean polluted sites, treat drinking water, or perform other cleanup operations.
Governor Kevin Stitt, always eager to help, has expressed concern that this legal action may damage the private sector and make Oklahoma less appealing to companies. Stitt took the step of firing the State Secretary of Energy and Environment last December and replaced him with attorney Jeff Starling, also critical of the lawsuit on business grounds. Starling has recently announced his candidacy for attorney general. Meanwhile, the Illinois river is presumably as phosphorescent as it’s ever been. So how do we act as stewards to our state? Do we follow the lead of a governor who took a vacation during this year’s wildfires? Should we take the easy money and let the Tyson Foods of the world treat our home like a truck stop bathroom? Somehow that doesn’t feel right. Then again, I’m biased. I happen to live here full-time.
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