Curtiss Killman of the Tulsa World News has an article telling the story of how off-duty Tulsa officials monitored poultry houses for the state.As Killman writes, “A dozen off-duty Tulsa police officers, most of them detectives, drove the back roads of eastern Oklahoma for months, taking thousands of pictures and generating thousands of reports based on what they observed, all as part of the state of Oklahoma's poultry-industry pollution lawsuit, testimony in the trial indicated Thursday”
4,000 structures were targeting aerially by using high-resolution photography, according to testimony given today by Bert Fisher. Mr. Fisher is “a scientist hired by the state.” The testimony established the length the state had been going to find evidence against the poultry houses, writes Killman. The state’s federal pollution claim was not filed until 2005.
Fisher said the officials began their work in 2005 and carried on through to 2007. The officials observed the disposal of the poultry litter at in the Illinois River watershed. U.S. District Judge Gregory Frizell is presiding over this non-jury trial-which has had a fare amount of intrigue- listened to testimony that the officers collected information to create a record of the historical levels of waste in the watershed, particularly phosphate from Lake Tenkiller, according to state attorney David Page. The essence of the state’s case is that the “phosphorous in poultry litter polluted the watershed” Killman reports that since 1954, the number of chickens and turkeys in the watershed has increased from 19 million to 152 million in 2002, according to a report by Fisher.
Fisher’s testimony continued: ‘“The total weight of poultry in the watershed has outweighed the sum of cattle, swine and humans’ for some time [.]; ‘This shows the amount of phosphate produced (by poultry) far exceeds the amount of waste by any other creature [.]”’
Naturally, the attorneys representing the poultry companies had a different tone to their tune. They claimed that fisher’s testimony was not proper at the time, and, indeed, “Frizzell did not admit Fisher’s phosphate comparison [with that of other animals] into the court record. Fisher also estimated that between 2000 and 2007 there had been 1.1 billion birds produced in the watershed.
Here are Killman’s highlights of day seven of the trial: The state hired a dozen off-duty Tulsa police officers to gather information. Poultry production in the watershed increased eightfold from 1954 to 2002.Oklahoma Conservation Commission official Shanon Phillips wrapped up testimony after nearly 11 hours on the stand over a four-day period.
Killman reports that there will be a break from the seven days of testimony in this trial until testimony resumes again on Tuesday in federal court in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Looks like the fun will have to wait until Tuesday.
To read Killman’s article for the Tulsa World click here.
Posted: 10/09/09
