Oklahoma City-The state attorney general’s suit against 16 poultry companies for phosphorus pollution of a critical watershed will proceed without the 160 third-party defendants, which included three cities and numerous farmers, ranchers, golf courses. But that doesn’t mean they’re off the hook, according to the Oklahoma Farm Bureau. Last August Federal Magistrate Sam Joyner ruled that the third parties named by the poultry companies be severed from the state’s case, but didn’t prevent the companies from going after these defendants after the first suit is decided. What the ruling did, reported Ericka McPherson, the bureau’s director of national affairs, is to turn one massive lawsuit into two, with the companies, after their liability is established, able to sue the third parties for what they contributed to the runoff. It’s been the producers’ strategy all along, McPherson noted, calling it a “brilliant move on their part because it doesn’t look good for the attorney general to sue all these individuals.” She said one highly reliable study indicated only 15 percent of the phosphorus runoff was from poultry litter, while 35 percent is from other sources, such as municipal treatment plants.
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