Oklahoma Officials Clash Over Tyson Pollution Case

This story was originally published on Investigate Midwest.

Oklahoma’s attorney general has asked a federal judge to keep the state’s governor out of a long-running lawsuit against Tyson Foods and other major poultry companies.

The lawsuit, filed by the state in 2005, accused several poultry companies of polluting the Illinois River Watershed in eastern Oklahoma with phosphorus from chicken waste spread on fields as fertilizer. In 2023, U.S. District Judge Gregory Frizzell ruled in favor of the state but ordered each side to negotiate damages.

This year, Attorney General Gentner Drummond asked Frizzell to impose penalties exceeding $100 million on the companies, including Tyson, Cargill and Simmons Foods.

But last month, Gov. Kevin Stitt sought to intervene. He asked the judge to force both sides to “renew their settlement efforts.”

Stitt has publicly criticized the lawsuit and, in 2024, signed a law shielding poultry companies from certain lawsuits. He also fired his energy and environment secretary after the official appeared in court supporting Drummond and environmental groups, a move Stitt said went against the interests of Oklahoma’s farmers and landowners.

Stitt’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

On Wednesday, Drummond filed a motion asking Frizzell to deny Stitt’s request and to move forward with a final ruling. He also accused Stitt of “cherry-picking” language from a recent Oklahoma Supreme Court decision to justify his involvement.

According to Drummond’s filing, the state and poultry companies continued settlement discussions voluntarily after submitting their proposed judgments this summer. Those talks recently broke down.

Stitt and Drummond — two of Oklahoma’s most powerful Republicans — have regularly clashed over various legal battles. Stitt is nearing the end of his second and final term. Drummond is one of several candidates seeking the governor’s office in the 2026 election.

Regarding Stitt’s attempt to intervene in the lawsuit, Drew Edmondson, the former Democratic attorney general who filed the original case and later ran unsuccessfully against Stitt in 2018, said:

“This is categorically a delay tactic and I do not believe the court will buy it.”

Although state lawmakers have passed measures to limit the poultry industry’s environmental impact — including the use of “nutrient management plans” that dictate how much poultry waste can be applied to farmland and how much must be hauled away — pollution, along with residents’ complaints about odors and water quality, remains a persistent problem.

The state ranks among the top 10 in the nation for chicken production, with major operations concentrated in eastern Oklahoma near the Arkansas border. In 2023, Oklahoma raised 215 million broiler chickens, valued at more than $1 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

This article first appeared on Investigate Midwest and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.