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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KATV) — It appears the decades-long legal battle by the state of Oklahoma against poultry companies in northwest Arkansas over the pollution of the Illinois River watershed with chicken litter is reaching its conclusion.

Tyson and Cargill are the latest companies to agree to a settlement with Oklahoma after initially fighting a December federal court ruling holding them liable for pollution in the Illinois River watershed.

The new settlement, agreed to on Thursday, is a lot easier for Tyson and Cargill to swallow than that December ruling and the uncertainty it created.

That ruling demanded that farmers contracted with defendant poultry companies in northwest Arkansas be closely watched for at least 30 years by a monitoring team led by a special master to assure compliance with strict requirements for chicken waste disposal and land application and assess its impact on waterways.

What’s more, the December ruling would have had poultry companies pay for the team’s work, with initial payments of $10 million into an account and then $5 million more every time the fund fell below $5 million.

Panicking poultry companies, afraid of such a long period of liability and uncapped costs, began refusing to renew contracts with farmers in the region. Some farmers have already found themselves without a contract after being nonrenewed.

The new settlement helps eliminate the uncertainty by asking the companies for one-time payments—Tyson $19 million and Cargill $6.5 million. Some of that money will fund a special master who will ensure compliance with the settlement, but for a time period of seven years rather than at least 30.

For poultry growers in northwest Arkansas, it’s a relief, relatively.

“With the settlement, like I said, we feel a little bit more confident that Tyson would like to stay in northwest Arkansas,” Cheyenne Holliday, a poultry farmer for Tyson in Washington County, told KATV. Holliday says Tyson has told her family that their contract would not be renewed.

But the lawsuit against poultry companies in Arkansas has already done much damage, and the new settlement restricts the land application and sale of chicken litter as fertilizer, an important source of revenue for poultry farmers.

“I think that this is devastating to northwest Arkansas’s poultry industry. Undoubtedly, it’s going to impact the poultry production in northwest Arkansas. Poultry producers not having the ability to sell their litter is going to be hard on them,” Holliday said.

“If our farm was able to get a contract and able to sell our farm for any amount of money, we would probably leave northwest Arkansas. I don’t think that it would be smart business for us to stay in a place where we’re always going to be under the microscope as far as water quality is concerned,” she told KATV.

Holliday and other poultry farmers contracted with defendant companies don’t feel they’ve been treated fairly by the courts—since the lawsuit’s inception two decades ago, they say they’ve taken steps to better protect waterways from chicken litter pollution and say the Illinois River actually meets the original water quality standards demanded by Oklahoma in 2004.

“This settlement does not mean that poultry farmers are guilty of the water quality issue in the Illinois River watershed,” Holliday said.

What’s more, lawmakers say the state of Arkansas has instituted regulatory reforms to ensure it.

“That initiated a series of laws and changes that I was a part of even before I was in the Legislature to try to address this. I mean, the ultimate part is that we have to do things like we have farm plans that we have to go by. These are soil tests, and these give our application rates that we are supposed to abide by,” State Sen. Bryan King, (R) District 28, told KATV. King himself is a poultry farmer.

It’s not over just yet, as the judge in the case still has to approve Tyson and Cargill’s settlement with Oklahoma. And if he doesn’t do that, the December ruling still stands, and it’s back to the negotiating table.

“There is some relief in knowing that there was a settlement and that Tyson was at least willing to settle and not wait for the appeal process to happen, which could have taken several years. But if the judge doesn’t sign off on this settlement, honestly, the settlements don’t mean anything,” Holliday said.

Tyson, Cargill, and the state of Oklahoma have requested a court hearing for March 2, at which time the judge may decide whether or not to approve the settlement.