Poultry companies and the state of Oklahoma are asking U.S. District Judge Gregory Frizzell to vacate his December 2025 pollution ruling and approve a $44 million settlement that would close a lawsuit filed in 2005 over water quality in the Illinois River Watershed.

The motion, filed Sept. 22 in the Northern District of Oklahoma — eight days ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline — asks Frizzell to "end this case once and for all" after what the filing describes as two decades of litigation, two trials, multiple evidentiary hearings, multiple mediations, a final judgment, seven notices of appeal, a flurry of post-judgment motions and five more notices of appeal.

"Everyone has had enough," the filing states.

The procedural opening came on Aug. 17, when the Denver-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit paused Frizzell's December ruling but declined to vacate it. The appeals court instead permitted the parties to seek vacatur "based on new circumstances that [the district court] has never considered — a settlement agreement entered into by all parties."

"The parties have asked for an expedited appeal," said Elizabeth Rumley, senior staff attorney at the National Agricultural Law Center. "Judge Frizzell will now consider whether this new settlement, with all parties, is enough to resolve the case."

Frizzell's December ruling held poultry corporations responsible for pollution in the Illinois River, required them to fund decades of cleanup and imposed restrictions on poultry litter applications within the watershed.

What the settlement requires

All parties have signed the proposed agreement, reached in July. Under its terms, the defendants would:

• Pay $41.671 million into an Environmental Relief Fund. According to statements made in previous hearings, up to half of that money could go to attorney fees, with remaining funds transferred to the Oklahoma Conservation Commission for watershed stewardship.
• Pay a combined $420,000 in penalties to the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality Revolving Fund.
• Fund a combined $1.9 million Auditor Fund to pay for an agreed-upon independent compliance monitor.
• Progressively reduce the share of litter removed from poultry houses each year that is applied to land within the watershed — from no more than 40 percent in years 1 and 2, to no more than 30 percent in years 3 and 4, down to no more than 20 percent in years 5 through 7. Litter exported from the watershed to meet those limits may not be applied to land in any other nutrient-sensitive watershed in Oklahoma.
• Fund, or secure funding for, half the cost of installing vegetative buffers on qualifying poultry farms along Lake Tenkiller and the watershed's Scenic Rivers, which filter runoff before it reaches the water.
• Submit to annual compliance certifications and audits, with financial penalties for any company that misses its litter-reduction commitments.

The litter cap schedule is the settlement's most direct constraint on growers' nutrient management. It forces a steadily larger share of house cleanout litter to move out of the watershed entirely, and bars companies from simply shifting those tons onto fields in other nutrient-sensitive basins within Oklahoma — a provision that will shape litter hauling, storage and export economics for integrators and contract growers alike over the next seven years.

Two decades of litigation

The case traces back to Oklahoma's Scenic Rivers Act of 1970, which designated the Illinois River a scenic waterway. In 1993, the state legislature made it "unlawful for any person to cause pollution of any waters of the state," declaring any such action a public nuisance.

Several legal clashes over Illinois River water quality followed. The current case was filed in 2005. Frizzell's merits ruling in 2023 recognized poultry litter as a key source of pollution in the watershed, setting up the December 2025 judgment and the appeals that followed.

The parties filed their motion on an expedited basis, and the filing urges speed: the settlement, it argues, is enough to resolve the case without further appellate proceedings. If Frizzell grants vacatur, the July agreement's funding, litter-reduction caps and audit regime would take the place of the court-ordered cleanup obligations he imposed in December.