Image credits 5News
At the Thursday, January 15, 2026 Washington County Quorum Court meeting, we unanimously passed a resolution supporting local poultry farmers and urging science-based solutions that protect the Illinois River Watershed.
Oklahoma filed a lawsuit in 2005 against 11 poultry companies, including Tyson Foods, Simmons, and George’s. Oklahoma argued that poultry litter spread on land in the watershed was raising phosphorus levels and harming water quality.
In late December 2025, a federal judge entered a judgment ordering the companies to pay for the cleanup of the Illinois River watershed and to limit how poultry waste can be applied in the region.
Poultry companies appealed, so the legal fight is still not settled.
Tyson has also publicly warned that it would not grant new poultry-growing contracts in the Illinois River watershed or renew existing ones there. That sent a shockwave through local farming communities, threatening to shatter their family businesses. We heard emotional public comments from local farmers worried about losing everything, despite having done everything they've been asked to do.
Earlier this month, I decided to join a bipartisan news conference on the issue. I spoke about the real risk to local farm families and the need to protect the watershed at the same time. Here's the 5News coverage of that event.
Left to right: Justice of the Peace Lisa Ecke, County Judge Patrick Deakins, and Justice of the Peace Evelyn Rios Stafford
Then, one day before our meeting, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond announced a settlement with George’s, Inc. George’s agreed to pay $5 million to the State of Oklahoma for remediation and conservation projects and attorney fees, plus $250,000 to fund a Special Master who will monitor compliance.
Here's the statement I made before we passed the resolution:
I’m supporting this resolution tonight because it’s about two resources that we have to protect: our local farmers and our watershed.
Both of them matter to Washington County’s economy. In both cases, once they’re gone, they’re gone.
We cannot sit by and watch a farming industry get destroyed that supports families across our county. Some of these farms have been in local families for generations.
Just as important, we have to protect the Illinois River watershed. It waters our crops. It provides drinking water for Siloam Springs and Tahlequah. It’s used for fishing and kayaking, and six wastewater treatment plants rely on it.
It is a critical infrastructure, just like an interstate. We would never let an interstate crumble. If we let the river go to pot, clean water gets more expensive for everybody.
What makes this ongoing court case so heartbreaking is the uncertainty it has brought to our local farmers, who are not even part of it. Our farmers are getting squeezed on both sides, stuck between a rock and a hard place: big government on one side and big corporations on the other side.
Many growers will tell you that, in practice, they are told what to do and how to do it by the corporations they sell to. And now the people with the least control and the least leverage are carrying the heaviest burden. That’s why I think it’s important for us to speak up and help give them some leverage.
The two sides - the government and the corporations- need to come together, just like this resolution says, talk to each other, and work something out.
Our farmers deserve credit for making major long-term progress in cutting phosphorus in the watershed. Right now, they are not getting credit for that progress, even as our region has grown. We have been heading in the right direction, and that matters.
But instead of taking those good-faith efforts into account, that progress has been ignored, and these farmers are being punished the same as if they’d made no progress.
That’s why I support this resolution: agreements based on science, and a push for the parties to start talking in good faith.
We’ve seen it ourselves in just the last few months, how a federal court case can drag on, be expensive, and create uncertainty for everyone [this is a reference to the county's recent $500,000 settlement in the Eaglecrest case]. I believe the two sides can come to a solution that protects the river AND protects our farm families.
That’s why I’ll be voting yes.
Here's the full text of the resolution, "A Resolution of the Washington County Quorum Court Expressing Support for Poultry Producers in the Illinois River Watershed and Urging a Return to Good-Faith Negotiations".
Here's the video of our discussion: