Oklahoma’s famous “busload of lawyers” case is back in the news because of president-elect Donald J. Trump’s nomination of Scott Pruitt to be administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Pruitt is Oklahoma’s Attorney General. Environmental groups are saying Pruitt did not pursue a pollution case against the Arkansas poultry industry because he received $40,000 in…
A fast-moving, but emotional civil trial pitting environmentalists against family farmers could end in the next day or two with a ruling by U.S. District Judge William M. Nickerson in Baltimore. At issue is whether common practices for handling chicken manure violate the federal Clean Water Act. The trial, which Judge Nickerson is hearing without…
Arkansas rice growers say chicken industry practices promoted by industry giants like Pfizer, Tyson Foods Inc. and other big chicken producers are responsible for the high arsenic levels being detected in their crops. The growers have asked the Circuit Court for the Southern District of Arkansas for a jury trial to decide whether their claim…
It’s been more than two years since a federal bench trial in Oklahoma over chicken industry practices ended, but that judge has yet to issue a ruling. Now a three-week bench trial is underway in Baltimore for the case of Waterkeeper Alliance Inc. v Alan and Kristin Hudson Farm et al. This one is also…
What happens if evidence, sitting in a drawer, changes before a judge has time to write a decision?
Just that may have happened in the ongoing saga of Oklahoma’s lawsuit against the largely Arkansas-based poultry industry for polluting the Illinois River with poultry litter.
Roll back a year ago, when one of the more dramatic …
Oklahoma’s newly elected leadership, Republicans Governor-elect Mary Fallin and Attorney General-elect Scott Pruitt, say they have the future of the state’s litigation against the poultry industry over its pollution of public waters under formal review.
Executive power in the Sooner State will turn over in January when both Gov. Brad Henry and Attorney General Drew …
Nutrient trading, a market-based approach for protecting and improving water quality, is going into effect in Maryland. The Maryland Department of Agriculture (MDA) will run the nutrient credit-trading program.
Goal of the Nutrient Trading Program is to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus run-off into Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. House Bill 974, authorizing the program, passed …
Lawyers making closing arguments waited a week for an ill U.S. District Judge Gregory K. Frizzell to return to the bench, but the chicken waste trial did come to an end last week.
With no jury in the civil trial, it’s up to Judge Frizzell to decide who wins–the State of Oklahoma that wants to …
In documents filed ahead of this week’s closing arguments in a trial against 11 poultry companies, the State of Oklahoma says it could live with an application limit of 65 pounds of poultry litter per acre.
Poultry companies, however, want to come out of the federal trial in Tulsa with no limits, saying the state …
A “scientifically robust model of the Illinois River watershed” will be built in the next year and half by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the purpose of establishing “maximum daily loads” of pollutants like phosphorus from poultry litter.
EPA told state officials in Oklahoma and Arkansas about its plans to “take the lead” …
Phosphorus-loading rivers and lakes is the down side to using poultry litter as a cheap form of fertilizer.
But nitrogen in chicken manure means it releases nitrogen oxide when burned to make electricity.
Current research is being conducted to determine whether there is a more “green” option for disposing of poultry litter by converting the …
