Farm Animal Transparency (FAT)’s weekly Environmental Watch — a digest of environmental permits, litigation, and settlements involving companies in the meat, poultry, and seafood supply chains. Full details, classifications, and sources for every matter live on the Environmental Watch tracker.

Two items this week: in Oklahoma, all parties have jointly asked the district court to vacate its own December 2025 judgment so the poultry-litter settlement can take effect — the clearest sign yet that a ruling may be coming. And FAT is adding a new federal rulemaking to the tracker: an EPA proposal that would exempt most offshore seafood processors from Clean Water Act discharge reporting. Every other tracked matter is unchanged. Details below.

Oklahoma poultry-litter settlement: all parties ask the judge to drop his own ruling

Per Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette / Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporting headlined “Drop your ruling in the Illinois River pollution case, all parties ask judge” (published September 22, 2026), the State of Oklahoma and the settling poultry companies — Tyson Foods, Cargill, George’s, Peterson Farms, Cal-Maine, and Simmons Foods — have now jointly asked Judge Frizzell to withdraw or vacate his December 19, 2025 judgment against them. That is exactly the question the Tenth Circuit’s August 19, 2026 limited remand sent back to the district court to decide, so this joint request appears to be the parties formally making their case on remand, not a separate development from last week’s reported order directing them to do so. FAT could not access the full article this week — both nwaonline.com and arkansasonline.com blocked automated access, and no other outlet had picked up the story as of this scan — so the specific procedural vehicle, any briefing or hearing schedule, and the timing of a ruling remain unconfirmed. FAT will attempt to obtain the underlying motion and docket text directly next scan. The settlement’s classification is unchanged: not final, with the six-month vacatur window closing on or about January 10, 2027. Full tracker page →

New matter: EPA proposes exempting offshore seafood processors from pollution-discharge reporting

FAT is adding a new federal rulemaking to the tracker: on September 4, 2026, EPA published a proposed rule (91 Fed. Reg. 56819) that would exempt offshore seafood-processing operations — vessels or facilities more than three nautical miles from shore and not attached to the seabed — from Clean Water Act NPDES permitting and discharge-reporting requirements. EPA frames it as clarifying existing definitions rather than a substantive rollback, but the practical effect is that roughly 80 current permit holders, concentrated among seafood processors in Alaska, Washington, and Oregon (including large catcher-processor vessels fishing pollock in the Bering Sea), would no longer have to report their discharges through the permitting process. The At-sea Processors Association says it did not request the change and is still reviewing it. The public comment period runs through October 19, 2026; no final rule has issued and no litigation has been filed. This is a proposed rule, not an adjudicated or even final agency action — FAT is tracking it because, if finalized, it would remove a source of plant-level discharge data for a segment of the seafood-processing industry. Digest-only for now, pending Dirk’s decision on a tracker page. Full Environmental Watch index →

No change this week

FAT located no new developments this week on: the Oakridge Dairy digestate-storage permit in Somers, Connecticut; Rural Empowerment Association for Community Help v. EPA (D.C. Cir. No. 25-5354 — no oral-argument scheduling order located); the criminal Clean Water Act case against the Naguabo, Puerto Rico slaughterhouse (United States v. Ganaderos Borges, Inc.); the Pacific Seafood citizen suits and Oregon DEQ civil penalty (appeal status still unconfirmed); Waterkeeper Alliance v. EPA, the Ninth Circuit challenge to EPA’s withdrawal of the proposed meat and poultry effluent-guidelines update; the Center for Biological Diversity’s Weld County suit over the JBS Greeley beef slaughterhouse’s air permit; the Perdue AgriBusiness PFAS litigation and wastewater-permit expansion request in Salisbury, Maryland; or State of Texas v. Darling Ingredients, Inc., the Bastrop rendering-plant odor case. All remain as previously reported — allegations only, no adjudicated violations. REACH v. EPA tracker → · Waterkeeper v. EPA tracker →

FAT also reviewed its North Carolina swine-CAFO regulatory cluster this week — the EMC rulemaking watch following N.C. DEQ v. N.C. Farm Bureau Federation, the EPA Title VI complaint over Duplin/Sampson County digester permits, Randolph Cnty. Bd. of Educ. v. Stein and the paused Smithfield-funded grants program, the animal-waste general-permit renewal, enforcement posture after the Farm Act’s repeal of the swine Violation Points System, and the Align RNG digester buildout. No confirmed genuine movement was found on any of the six threads this week. One item is flagged for direct follow-up rather than reported as movement: a DEQ-hosted draft general-permit document for cattle/dairy waste digesters (AWG500000) carrying a July 2026 draft date, whose currency and relevance FAT could not confirm this scan. Background on this cluster is in FAT’s briefing North Carolina’s Hog CAFOs in 2026: A Regulatory Record That Closed, and a Label That Never Opened.

Also on FAT’s watch list: Shenandoah Valley Organic (the “Farmer Focus” chicken brand) in Harrisonburg, Virginia — repeated pretreatment-permit notices of violation reported June 2026. No escalation to formal enforcement located this week. Not yet a tracker matter.

Dates to watch

• Coming weeks — the N.D. Okla. district court’s ruling on the parties’ joint request to vacate the December 2025 Oklahoma judgment.
• October 1, 2026 — extended deadline for attorney-fee motions in the Oklahoma district court.
• October 19, 2026 — public comment period closes on EPA’s proposed NPDES exemption for offshore seafood processors.
• November 9, 2026 — MDE public-comment period closes on Perdue AgriBusiness’s Salisbury wastewater-permit expansion request.
• On or about January 10, 2027 — the Oklahoma settlement’s six-month vacatur window closes; without vacatur and dismissal, the settlement becomes unenforceable.

FAT keeps the most recent six months of weekly Environmental Watch reports published. Older reports are archived and available upon request — email dirkadams@farmanimaltransparency.com. See all tracked matters at the Environmental Watch index.