John Braun: Let’s have more action on water quality concerns tied to game farm

Two recent public meetings about the water contamination situation stemming from the Bob Oke Game Farm in Centralia bring to mind the warning not to confuse motion with action.

There’s been no shortage of motion from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, which breeds and raises pheasants at the game farm just west of Interstate 5 — and is seen by local officials and the affected residents as being responsible for contaminating the local aquifer with skyrocketing nitrate levels.

At the meetings, the agency ticked off a list of things it’s done in response to the situation since the previous public discussion, in March. Those listening didn’t seem to be swayed, as they came away using words like “delay” and “obfuscate.”

We can all agree there’s nothing good about this. Through no fault of their own, some 70 homeowners in the Fords Prairie area of Centralia are faced with losing their private wells and taking on the expense of connecting to city water and sewer services, something that they never expected. The Legislature approved a special appropriation of $5 million this year to help the city extend the necessary infrastructure.

In the meantime, they must worry about dealing in one way or another with potentially hazardous levels of nitrate contamination in their well water.

It’s also another entry for the long list of executive branch management failures Democrats in our state have racked up over the years. While we’ve seen bigger fiascos, and examples that are more tragic, Olympia owns this one from stem to stern: state government created a problem, took too long to acknowledge it’s a problem, and is now having trouble recognizing what needs to be done and doing it with a sense of urgency.

The affected residents are understandably frustrated when WDFW officials “stop short of accepting full blame” for the contamination, to quote from a recent headline in The Chronicle.

Legislators know WDFW doesn’t seem to have an issue with being financially accountable for damage to commercial crops done by elk and deer and the livestock losses caused by wolves, all of which are a result of state policies. Those issues come before us as part of the budgeting process, and Republicans ask time and again for farmers and ranchers to be provided with relief.

However, the agency has likely been instructed to watch its words very carefully regarding the Fords Prairie aquifer contamination to avoid putting itself in a position to be held financially liable for any damages.

After all, the legal costs of mismanagement of other state responsibilities by multiple state agencies have exceeded more than a half-billion dollars in just the past two years alone; coincidentally, they include a $7.3 million judgment against the Department of Corrections for water contamination.

That said, the agency isn’t going to gain any credibility with unhappy Centralians by continuing to describe the game farm as just one of multiple “contributing factors” to the contamination, as a deputy director did at the first of the two meetings in Lewis County.

It’s also frustrating to think about how this situation might have been prevented if the state had followed its own rules.

For probably the past 20 years, farming operations with a certain number of animals — 200 mature dairy cows, 750 pigs or 9,000 chickens — have been required to obtain a “confined animal feeding operation” permit from the state Department of Ecology. The “CAFO” permit comes with specific management practices to limit pollution of surface water and groundwater.

The Centralia game farm breeds and raises around 40,000 pheasants annually, and has for decades, but because it’s not a commercial operation, no CAFO permit was required. That means no fine from Ecology for contaminating water, like a commercial farm might receive.

WDFW now says its pheasant farming will comply with the CAFO mandates as of early next year. To use an appropriate expression, that sounds like closing the barn door after the horse is already out.

That’s because the nitrate readings at the site are already at dangerous levels, so removing the source of that contamination entirely would be too little, too late. But WDFW isn’t even doing that — it’s only reducing the number of birds and making a few other changes with a nod to nitrate containment.

The game farm is named for the late Republican Sen. Bob Oke, an avid bird hunter who was always concerned about the state providing enough opportunities for hunters. I have to believe he would be disappointed that the state was not doing a good job of raising the birds in an environmentally responsible manner, regardless of the facility’s name.

The agency emailed me about a couple of specific things it plans to do, like continue to collect groundwater data and assess nitrogen levels in the soil. However, there was no mention of moving the entire pheasant operation elsewhere, as some suggested at the recent public meetings — only vague items like “implement best management practices” and “evaluate possible remedial methods.”

There came a time in 2024 when it made sense to bring the situation at Green Hill School in Chehalis to the governor’s attention. I’ve concluded the same is true now for the Centralia pheasant farm.

Although environmental issues are conspicuously missing from the list of priorities on the governor’s website, Governor Ferguson has not been shy about noting he was the first attorney general to take on the now-defunct Monsanto Corporation for polluting waterways – a case in which he clearly asserted the state’s interest in remediating and preventing contamination.

In his January inaugural speech, the governor declared that his administration’s mission must be to “speed up government, improve customer service and center the people in every decision we make.”

The residents of Centralia affected by the Fords Prairie nitrates contamination haven’t received the service they are owed. They deserve a speedier and more effective response from the state government that puts them at the center. That’s how state government agencies do better.

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Sen. John Braun of Centralia serves the 20th Legislative District, which spans parts of four counties from Yelm to Vancouver. He became Senate Republican leader in 2020.