Witness: Karst speeds runoff
Posted on Thursday, February 21, 2008
TULSA — The Illinois River’s water quality would improve immediately if a federal judge bans the spreading of poultry litter on farms in the watershed, a Florida toxicologist testified Wednesday.
Christopher Teaf, associate director of biomedical research at Florida State University in Tallahassee, made the claim in U. S. District Court during a hearing on Oklahoma’s request for a preliminary injunction to stop the practice.
“You’ll stake your professional reputation on it ?” asked Robert George, an attorney representing Springdale-based Tyson Foods Inc.
“Sir, if I didn’t think that was the case, I wouldn’t be here,” the toxicologist said.
Teaf was among several experts who testified for Oklahoma on Wednesday. The injunction is part of a federal lawsuit filed by Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson against eight poultry companies with operations in Arkansas. The suit claims the companies are polluting the watershed with poultry litter.
Other witnesses testified about the quantity of poultry litter produced in the watershed, and how contamination from poultry litter moves from farm fields into water through fissures in the subterranean limestone karst that’s found throughout the watershed in eastern Oklahoma and Northwest Arkansas.
Teaf, in particular, drew pointed questions from George, a Fayetteville attorney. Teaf said Adair County in Oklahoma had 10 illnesses related to campylobacter in 2005, but George suggested that the testimony didn’t paint a fair picture for U. S. District Judge Gregory Frizzell.
Campylobacter is a common bacteria that can cause infection and diarrhea.
George accused Teaf of cherry-picking evidence to support the state’s theories about poultry litter contamination and bacteria — but ignoring evidence that refutes those theories.
Teaf didn’t mention that three other Oklahoma counties in the watershed — Sequoyah, Cherokee and Delaware — had incidents of campylobacter lower than the state average.
Louis Bullock, a private attorney working for the state, asked Teaf why he didn’t mention the other counties.
“Why is Adair County important ?” Bullock asked.
“It’s immediately adjacent to Arkansas,” Teaf said.
“And what do you find a concentration of in Arkansas ?” Bullock asked.
“Chicken,” Teaf said.
Berton Fisher described for the court the process used by Oklahoma and the private attorneys hired to assist the state to collect evidence before seeking the preliminary injunction last fall.
Fisher, a geologist who owns a Tulsa company called Lithochemia, said he hired nine offduty homicide detectives from the Tulsa Police Department to conduct surveillance of 1, 800 poultry houses in the watershed.
About 80 percent of those houses are in Arkansas.
The detectives took photographs of nearly every poultry house in the watershed, Fisher said.
The detectives took meticulous notes to describe the activities at each of those farms, Fisher said.
He also explained how poultry litter being spread on farm fields in a watershed with karst topography allows it to more easily reach groundwater.
“The geology is very important,” Fisher said. “It’s the stage on which the play is made.” Richard Garren, a private attorney working for Oklahoma, asked what effect the geology has on the litter’s ability to spread.
“It sets up the circumstance that poultry waste has a ready ability to penetrate into the groundwater,” Fisher said.
Oklahoma left it to Bernard Engel, head of the agricultural and biological engineering department at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., to determine how much poultry litter is produced by the eight poultry companies that operate in the watershed.
Engel gave a variety of answers, depending on how he did the calculations. He said 347, 000 tons in an affidavit but asked to modify the answer to 345, 436 tons on Wednesday because he had better information. In other calculations he described Wednesday, he measured 445, 000 tons, 528, 000 tons and a range of 316, 000 to 380, 000 tons.
George questioned why there was so much disparity in the estimates.
“Dr. Engel, what’s your number today ?” George asked.
Engel said he’d stand by the 345, 436-ton estimate, which he said was a conservative guess. He connected 163, 000 tons to farmers who raise chickens for Tyson Foods.
Engel, whose brother lives near Tontitown, also acknowledged he’s a bit of a chicken man, albeit a small one.
He gave his wife the credit — or the blame — for the five chickens on the family’s Indiana farm.
The litter is used in the family’s garden and on a 100-acre pasture.
“The waste of five chickens doesn’t go far on 100 acres,” Engel said.
“Do you wish you had more ?” George asked him.
“I wish she had fewer livestock in general, but that’s another discussion,” Engel said.
The final day of testimony by witnesses for Oklahoma will begin at 9 a.m. today at the U. S. District Courthouse in Tulsa. The poultry companies will begin presenting their witnesses against the injunction Friday.
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