
A group of 11 kayakers gathered on the shore of the Illinois River in late December, their brightly colored vessels lined in a row, ready to launch for the 8-and-a-half mile trip down stream.
Ed Fite, the leader of the trip that day, was one of the last kayakers in the water after ensuring that the others got out safely. It was a trip he has made dozens of times, likely more, in his decades of experience on the Illinois River. The relatively warm weather made this trip a “fair weather” version of his annual New Year’s Day float down the river.
The wintertime floats allow the kayakers to make the trek with little interference from the summertime crowds that seek the river each year for its cool water and idyllic scenery. For Fite, it’s the best time to be on the water. And when there’s snow on the ground, it turns the trip into an entirely different experience.
“The water is crystal clear,” Fite said. “You can see to the bottom substrate, and when a school of fish goes under you, they look like blue and silver streaks. Icicles are hanging off the rocks. It makes the sound of the river different.”
Fite maneuvered his kayak alongside a smaller group of kayakers. He put his paddle in the water to measure the depth, about three to four feet over a gravel and stone bottom that raced by as the river pulled the kayakers south. Any deeper and the bottom would not be visible, Fite said, but in this section it was possible to make out the green algae covering the stones of the riverbed. It didn’t used to be this way. There shouldn’t be much algae in that part of the river in the winter, he said.
“You should be able to see through this to the bottom,” Fite said. “Granted, we’ve had some rain, and there might be a little influence from that.”
Fite was the first witness the state of Oklahoma called during an evidentiary hearing in December on the health of the river in a Tulsa federal courtroom. The civil case, which alleges that some of the country’s largest poultry companies including Tyson Foods, Simmons Foods and Cargill, knew chicken litter from their producers was polluting the Illinois River and nearby Lake Tenkiller, is now in its 20th year of litigation. A ruling in the case could have far-reaching environmental consequences for the Illinois River and surrounding region. Oklahoma is asking the court to order the poultry companies to reduce their distribution of poultry waste and pay for clean up costs.
Then-Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson filed the lawsuit in 2005. It didn’t go to trial until 2009, and it wasn’t until January 2023 that U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Frizzell rendered a judgement, finding that the poultry companies had contributed to the degradation of the river and Lake Tenkiller.
Frizzell found that runoff from fields where farmers used chicken litter as fertilizer had leached phosphorus into the river. That phosphorus helped spur algae growth in the river and the lake, reducing water quality and clarity and harming the aesthetics and aquatic animals in the streams and lake to the point of being a public nuisance.
The poultry companies named as defendants in the lawsuit did little if anything to ensure poultry growers were handling the litter properly, Frizzell wrote in his ruling, and could be held liable for the environmental damage for violating the state’s water anti-degredation law.
Frizzell gave the state and poultry companies until March 17, 2023 to reach an agreement to come up with remedies to solve the problem, but that deadline came and went with no deal.
Attorneys for the poultry companies argued that the case should be dismissed and that the evidence Frizzell based his judgement on had grown stale in the 15 years since the trial. There were indications that the phosphorus in the river was on a significant downward trend, they argued.The industry had developed new practices to reduce environmental harm and Oklahoma, Arkansas and the poultry companies had developed a program to remove poultry litter from the watershed more than a decade ago.
So over the course of six days late last year, Frizzell heard testimony about what had changed since the trial. A ruling in the case could have far-reaching environmental consequences for the Illinois River and surrounding region as well as the poultry companies. Oklahoma is asking the court to order the poultry companies to reduce their distribution of poultry waste and pay for clean up costs. Both the state and poultry companies submitted to the court their proposed findings from the hearing on Thursday, though there is no clear timeline for when Frizzell may rule.

An old friend
As a child, Fite fished and swam in the river. As an adult, he’s fought to protect it.
Fite served as administrator for the Oklahoma Scenic River Commission from 1983 until the commission was folded into the Grand River Dam Authority in 2016, where he still works as vice president for rivers operations and water quality. Fite, who lives alongside the river, said he still visits it daily and tries to float sections of it at least once a week.
Fite speaks of the river as another person might speak of an old friend. He speaks of his experiences with it and how it has changed over the years.
And so it was that Fite found himself in Frizzell’s federal courtroom on Dec. 3, called to the stand by Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who asked him about his opinion on the current health of the river.
“The old gal to me, I feel, is not well,” Fite said “She’s still impaired.”
Water sampling has shown that levels of phosphorus have gone down in the river since the 1990s, but they appear to be on the rise again, Fite testified.
Witnesses for the poultry companies disputed that phosphorus levels are rising and say pollution could also come from other sources upstream.
Water quality has ebbed and flowed over the years, Fite testified, and there have been changes to the river since the trial ended — it’s gotten wider, slower in many areas as high-flow events eat away at the riverbank, washing sediment and soil downstream into the upper reaches of Lake Tenkiller. Last year, he said, there weren’t many large rain storms, meaning the algae that would otherwise be scoured off the rocks on the riverbed remained carpeting all but the fastest-flowing areas for most of last summer. The algae growth kept the river water an opaque bluish-green color, and it had an odd smell, Fite said.
“I’m starting to become concerned when I go to the river and look at the river” Fite said. “It’s not doing well.”
The hundreds of chicken farms in the Illinois River Watershed and other areas of eastern Oklahoma feed into the numerous poultry processing plants just over the border in Arkansas. Poultry is Arkansas’ leading agricultural industry.
Arkansas’ poultry industry exploded during and after World War II, as chickenwas one of the few meats that was not rationed during the war. But all those chickens created lots of manure.Poultry growers and ranchers began applying that waste as a low-cost fertilizer on the soil of their hay meadows and fields to increase yields
“They started putting that stuff on the ground and, literally, it started making grass grow on rocks,” Fite said.
Chicken litter — which is composed of poultry manure mixed with the birds’ bedding, consisting of rice hulls and wood shavings, contains nitrogen, which farmers and ranchers use to add to their soil to spur plant growth.
Excess phosphorus from the chicken litter can leech into the soil and groundwater, which can spur algae growth in lakes and rivers. The algae contributes to diminished water clarity, quality and can also kill fish and other aquatic life.
It wasn’t until 1998 that Oklahoma enacted laws requiring poultry growers to have nutrient management plans for how they would dispose of their litter and monitoring for those spreading more than 10 tons of litter per year on fields. Arkansas did not begin requiring nutrient management plans for growers until 2007, about two years after Oklahoma sued the poultry companies.
Both the state and witnesses for the poultry companies agreed that there have been changes in phosphorus levels in the river, but they disagreed on which direction they are trending.
Measurements can differ depending on when they were taken and recent rains. A sizable portion of phosphorus in the river comes from runoff during rainstorms, Fite said. But the poultry companies argue phosphorus readings taken after storms can artificially skew the numbers higher and should not be considered by Frizzell when making his decision. Frizzell, however, expressed skepticism that only using low-flow data would paint a real-world picture of the condition of the river.
Even without measurements from the highest flows of rainwater, there’s been an upward trend in phosphorus levels in the river over the past five years, an Oklahoma Water Resource Board official testified, and the state’s standard is still not being met. Phosphorus levels on the river are now back near 1993 levels, according to the testimony.
Witnesses called by the poultry company attorneys argued that it’s likely there are several reasons unrelated to chicken litter that higher levels of phosphorus are still being detected in the river.
Tyson Foods hired John Connolly, an environmental scientist, to examine changes in phosphorus levels in the Illinois River Watershed since the trial.
Connolly said that phosphorus concentration in the river at lower flows has declined in many locations over the past 15 years and that runoff into the river is a minimal contributor to those levels. He also testified that river water data shows evidence that wastewater treatment plants upstream are contributing to phosphorus levels.

An incomplete picture
As the kayakers on Fite’s fair-weather float neared Dog Hollow, near the town of Lowrey, Fite points to what used to be the riverbed diverting off to the right.
“Back when I was floating more than 40 years ago, the river made a turn through that. We called it ‘the wormhole,” Fite said.
Now, in addition to changes in river’s bed, erosion of the river bank has caused it to get wider, meaning the water slows down in more places, Fite said. And that means there’s less scouring of algae off the rocks, more places that gives algae a chance to grow and more material that makes it more difficult for the river to find a path forward.
The group comes to a section of faster moving water, yet algae still blanketed the bottom.
“See all that stuff on bottom?” Fite asked the kayakers nearby. “Notice how this whole hole is algae covered? It shouldn’t be that way. This is fast water.”
A lack of hard data has made it hard to discern how much the poultry industry may have contributed to algae growth in the river over the past two decades
Shannon Phillips, director of the water quality division for the Oklahoma Conservation Commission testified during the December hearing that the number of poultry houses has decreased since trial. But the houses have gotten bigger and hold more birds. Attorneys and expert witnesses for the poultry companies disputed the accuracy of Phillips’ numbers and measurement methodology.
Poultry company attorneys later called to the stand Patrick Fisk, director of the livestock and poultry division of the Arkansas Department of Agriculture, who said there have been a host of changes in both the way poultry growers operate and in the poultry litter market.
Compared to 15 years ago, Fisk said, the value of poultry litter has increased, and now it is shipped all over the country, rather than distributing it solely in the area around the Illinois River.
Under cross-examination, Fisk testified that the Arkansas Legislature had intentionally required poultry producer information to be hidden from the public.
“We did this because the Legislature wants to protect producers from outside harassment,” Fisk testified.
The future of Oklahoma rivers
In recent years, the Oklahoma’s government has moved to shield poultry operators from the consequences of the state’s environmental laws and lawsuits from neighbors.
On the first day of the recent evidentiary hearing, Gov. Kevin Stitt fired then-Secretary of Energy and Environment Ken McQueen via social media for showing up to court. McQueen was listed as a plaintiff in the case because of his cabinet position. McQueen had resigned prior to attending the hearing, but was not due to leave his position for another three weeks. He said he learned of his firing during the court’s lunch break.
The Oklahoma Department of Agriculture Food and Forestry stopped posting up-to-date information about new and expanding poultry operations in the state in 2019. And the agency stopped publishing annual data on poultry litter transports, saying the process was too “tedious.”
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The state’s permitting system for poultry farms is set up to limit regulations, including environmental monitoring and designation as a “point source” of pollution.
Oklahoma enacted a law in 2024 that makes it harder for anyone to sue a poultry producer for environmental harm if the grower has a nutrient management plan. Rep. David Harden, R-Stilwell, authored the bill. His wife, Lorrie Harden, is former state Department of Agriculture employee who contracted with Simmons Foods until March 2021 to create nutrient management plans.
This legislative session, Sen. George Burns, R-Pollard, has introduced Senate Bill 136, which would create a moratorium on any new poultry feeding operations and shut down those found to be polluting the water.
Burns also introduced Senate Bill 133, which would slow the spread of new poultry farms in the state by putting a moratorium on new non-domestic use groundwater permits until the Oklahoma Water Resources Board does a hydrological study.
As Fite’s fair-weather kayakers entered the end of their float, Fite pointed to the remains of a massive old sycamore tree in the middle of the river. Only four years ago, it was on the bank and people used to use it to jump into the river.
“Everybody’s got a river in the state that they love as much as I love this one,” Fite said. “They’re all worthy of protection.”
But trying to find a solution to the competing interests of the poultry companies and those who take joy in the aesthetic beauty and wildness of those places like the Illinois River is no easy task.
“How do we make it win-win for everybody?” Fite asked.
Fite shrugged, turned downstream and began to paddle quietly down the river, searching his mind for an answer to his own question.