Update 8:45 a.m. Wednesday, Dec. 4
Abegail Cave, a spokeswoman for Gov. Kevin Stitt, told The Frontier Wednesday that Oklahoma Secretary of Energy and Environment Ken McQueen, fired by Stitt during a hearing on Tuesday, had actually submitted his resignation in November. Stitt, Cave said, had warned McQueen about being involved in the poultry hearing.
“It was not abrupt,” Cave said about McQueen’s firing. “It was made clear to him he should not be engaging in this poultry lawsuit situation. He did anyway. So we just sped up the process a little bit.”
Cave sent McQueen’s resignation letter, in which he said he planned “to pursue an opportunity back in industry.”
“He (Stitt) felt as if this lawsuit was trying to retroactively change rules and hold business owners responsible for a new set of rules 20 years later,” Cave said.
Cave said Stitt had made it clear to McQueen to not take part in the lawsuit in any way. “He actively chose to go against those instructions and show up to court yesterday.”
Gov. Kevin Stitt fired Oklahoma Secretary of Energy and Environment Ken McQueen via social media on Tuesday, halfway through the first day of a federal court evidentiary hearing in Tulsa on the state’s decades-long lawsuit against several Arkansas poultry companies on degradation of the Illinois River watershed.
Stitt fired McQueen, who became one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit when Stitt appointed him to the cabinet post in August 2022, for attending the hearing, he said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“I am disappointed that Ken McQueen would join AG Drummond, former AG Drew Edmondson and environmentalists in opposition to Oklahoma farmers and landowners by appearing at a court hearing today in his capacity as Secretary,” Stitt posted around noon. “This nearly two-decade-old case is a radical left attempt at backdoor regulation through litigation. I’ve fired him from his position as Secretary of Energy and Environment and Director of the Department of Energy effective immediately.”
McQueen, who remained at the hearing for the rest of the day sitting in the jury box, said he learned of his firing from the social media post. McQueen said neither Stitt nor his aides ever instructed him not to attend the hearing, and the firing came as a surprise.
As one of the plaintiffs in the case, McQueen said he felt it was his duty to attend the hearing.
“At the end of the day, I feel I need to be true to myself and my statutory obligations,” McQueen said. “Oklahoma has a lot to do for water quality.”
The original lawsuit, filed in 2005 by then-Attorney General Drew Edmondson, listed then-Secretary of Energy and Environment C. Miles Tolbert as co-plaintiff against the poultry companies.
McQueen is a former oil and gas executive for Williams Company and WPX Energy. He was appointed as Secretary for New Mexico’s Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department in 2016 and was appointed EPA Region 6 Administrator under President Donald Trump in 2019.
McQueen said he has been visiting the Illinois River for decades, and has seen the environmental harm caused by phosphorus flowing into the river from chicken litter produced in the area.
“I can see the degraded conditions of the river that’s happened in my brief 50 years of visiting,” he said. “It’s unfortunate it’s taken so long to get a reasonable resolution.”
The hearing, which is expected to last several more days before Judge Gregory Frizzell, who in January 2023 issued a ruling that the poultry industry had contributed to polluting the Illinois River watershed and gave the state and the companies until March that year to come to an agreement. That deadline came and went, and the poultry companies are now arguing that the findings from the trial — which ended in 2010 — were stale and that the situation had changed. The state disagreed, and the purpose of the evidentiary hearing is to determine whether that is true..
Earlier this year, Stitt signed a bill shielding poultry companies from lawsuits for pollution, as long as they have an approved nutrient management plan. Stitt’s Secretary of Agriculture Blayne Arthur also wrote a letter to the court in September asking Frizzell to soften his approach to the case, echoing the poultry industry’s arguments about information in the case being out of date.
Following the lunch-break during Tuesday’s hearing, Attorney General Gentner Drummond announced to the court that McQueen had been fired by Stitt because “he had the audacity” to attend the hearing.
Frizzell seemed surprised by the announcement. Citing the expansion of oil and gas drilling in New Mexico during McQueen’s time heading the state’s Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department and as an oil and gas executive, Frizzell cracked “You’re no longer a running dog of capitalism, it seems.”
Asked by The Frontier what he plans to do next, McQueen said “It may be time to sit on my back porch and enjoy my grandkids.”
Prior to announcing McQueen’s firing, Stitt’s office announced Jeff Starling as his new cabinet secretary for energy and environment. Starling served as an attorney for Oklahoma-based Devon Energy Corp., and most recently was an executive for Lagoon Water Midstream.
After Tuesday’s hearing, Drummond said he had concerns about McQueen’s firing, that he was doing his statutory duty by attending the hearing, and praised his work as secretary of energy and environment.
Asked why he thought Stitt chose to fire McQueen, Drummond said “Water doesn’t make political donations. Poultry does.”
Tuesday’s hearing saw three witnesses for the plaintiffs take the stand — Grand River Dam Authority water quality administrator Ed Fite, Nautical Adventures Scuba owner Tim Knight and Oklahoma Water Resources Board environmental programs manager for lake and wetland monitoring Julie Chambers, who testified they had observed negative changes in water clarity, algae blooms and phosphorus content in Lake Tenkiller, the Illinois River and its state-designated scenic river tributaries since the end of the trial in 2010.
Drummond said plaintiffs have four more witnesses to call and will likely finish with their witnesses by the end of the week, though the court has booked Dec. 16 to Dec. 20 for additional testimony.
However, it will likely be several more years before the issue is resolved, McQueen said, since poultry companies are likely to appeal the case.
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