Chicken litter sparks lawsuit

US - Oklahoma is suing more than a dozen poultry growers, charging that animal waste produced in their operations poses a hazardous threat under the federal Superfund law, enacted 26 years ago to clean up abandoned chemical dumps.

Oklahoma's lawsuit follows the lead of litigation brought by the cities of Tulsa, Okla., in 2001 and Waco, Texas, in 2004, that also sought to declare animal manure a hazard under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980, better known as the Superfund statute. Both the Tulsa and Waco cases were settled out of court.

Such legal trends are alarming the nation's leading farming and agricultural organizations. They argue that Superfund was passed to deal with neglected waste sites such as dioxin-plagued Love Canal in New York state and a chemical dump in Times Beach, Mo., that had been used to produce the military defoliant Agent Orange.

Source: The Washington Times
calendar icon 11 July 2006
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