Runoff Suit Jumps Gun (Editorial)

It’s hard to pick a good guy — or a bad guy — in the continuing dispute between Arkansas and Oklahoma over water quality issues.

Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson has filed a lawsuit against 14 poultry firms that operate in Northwest Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma. He wants chicken litter declared a hazardous waste. He says phosphorous from poultry litter runoff promotes algae growth that reduces the clarity of rivers and streams, depletes oxygen and can kill certain populations of fish.

The Oklahoma lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount to clean up the Illinois River. It starts in Arkansas, drains a large area with lots of poultry farms and then flows into Oklahoma, which declared it a scenic river subject to tighter regulations.

Edmondson may be a hero to the environmentalists, but he was too quick on the draw in filing the lawsuit. Could good old politics also be at play?

There’s little doubt the poultry companies’ explosive growth in the past 20 years or so has contributed greatly to the problem. But so has the explosive population growth of the region, the companies rightly argue. Numerous communities in the area have built new wastewater treatment plants, but with all the growth, there’s more runoff during hard rains as trees have been cleared to build roads, homes and shopping centers.

Numerous attempts at negotiations between Edmondson and the poultry companies have failed.

Edmondson is adamant about forcing the companies to safely dispose of the waste and pay for any cleanup of damage already done.

There probably are measures the poultry companies could take, such as transporting the litter out of the watershed area to areas that need it — but would that prove to be so costly that the companies couldn’t stay in business?

Some have suggested that farmers create a narrow strip of natural vegetation to slow runoff along the river. Consider, though, that Arkansas has 2,363 chicken houses in the Illinois River watershed, according to the lawsuit. Oklahoma has 508.

If the companies are hurt, the owners of the chicken houses are hurt, and one of the most vibrant economies in the country could be hurt. The poultry industry contributes about $2 billion to the Northwest Arkansas economy.

The Arkansas growers question — and so do we — why Oklahoma is spending $1 million on a lawsuit when that money could be use to find other ways to use or dispose of the poultry litter, such as in composting or in generating electricity.