Gregory Kent Frizzell

Both sides in the pollution case agreed July 13th on a settlement that would require the companies deemed responsible for the phosphorus pollution to pay $44 million to the state of Oklahoma toward cleaning up the river while requiring them to pay for the planting of riparian buffers to filter the runoff from the fields from reaching the river and setting limits on the use of poultry litter to fertilize the fields.

They asked U.S. District Judge Gregory Frizzell to accept the settlement and set aside his demand for a special master to supervise the cleanup for three decades and raid the bank accounts of the producers he or she deemed necessary, which producers assumed would become a slush fund for political favors with a little off the top for wink, wink, expenses.

With the judgment being appealed to the Tenth Circuit Court in Denver, Colorado, the alternative might be a lengthy extension of the case, either through a new trial or continued appeals that may eventually make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, with the only parties likely to clean up being the tortfeasors involved in the case.

If there was a movie about Rogers-based auto franchisor America's Car Mart, this past month might have been depicted as an unusually long death scene as the company attempted to deal with its debt.