At the most recent public update on the ongoing nitrate contamination affecting the water supply for a number of Centralia residents, Lewis County Commissioner Sean Swope called for the relocation of the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) Bob Oke Game Farm.
But state officials say the farm is just part of the problem.
The Lewis County Board of Commissioners hosted a public meeting Monday afternoon to hear updates from the state and local governments on the ongoing nitrate contamination issue affecting drinking water from private wells at homes in the Fords Prairie neighborhood in the City of Centralia’s urban growth area.
The homes most impacted are located near Centralia High School, which has a safe, city-provided water supply, and the Bob Oke Game Farm, where WDFW raises thousands of pheasants each year. Early reports have identified the farm as the likely source of the high nitrate levels in the water supply.
Commissioners Lindsey Pollock and Swope were both present for the meeting which was the first public-facing meeting on the nitrate issue since March. During the March meeting, consulting firm Mott McDonald presented the findings of a water study that pointed to the Bob Oke Game Farm as a major contributor to nitrate levels in nearby groundwater. Along with its study findings, Mott McDonald laid out steps the game farm would need to take to mitigate its impact on the local aquifer.
Wildlife Program Deputy Director Cynthia Wilkerson from the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife was there, along with the operations specialist of the Bob Oke Game Farm Chris White, to provide updates on the recent and future mitigation efforts as well as the results of continued water studies.
A team from the City of Centralia made up of City Manager Michael Thomas and Centralia Public Works Director Andy Oien provided an update on work being done by the city to extend city water and sewer to the affected homes.
Other Lewis County health officials were also present, along with a group of residents from the affected areas who came searching for more information on work that impacts their day-to-day lives. Amy White, a Mayberry Road resident and unofficial spokesperson for the affected property owners, spoke up at the start of the meeting to call for more transparency from the city, county and state governments.
“I want to thank you for having us to the meeting today, but I do wish to point out how very disturbed my neighbors and I are that we found out about this meeting by guess and by golly,” White said. “It's just a miracle that there’s this many of us here, because there are a lot of retired folks, a lot of widows, a lot of folks that are just getting by that live on Mayberry Road, and this is our homes and our health and, for most of us, our most valuable asset.”
The state
Wilkerson took the lead in the meeting, starting with a PowerPoint presentation outlining the steps the WDFW has taken to follow through on the mitigation steps highlighted by the Mott McDonald report.
The officials split the mitigation steps into a number of categories, including short- and long-term actions. Actions already taken include adding cement to parts of the farm facility, removing birds from pens located over the “most productive part of the aquifer" and other steps such as trucking out the birds’ waste and reevaluating some of the waste and food storage systems.
“We said that we would have an approximate 40% reduction in birds raised at the facility, 100% reduction in adult birds located on the most productive part of the aquifer, and reduce the amount of time that chicks have access to that aquifer,” Wilkerson said.
While many of the steps were done per the Mott McDonald report, others are in the works, including a concentrated feeding permit, a permit often required for dairies and other large animal operations but, according to WDFW, not necessarily required for the pheasant farm.
Among a number of requirements, the concentrated feeding permit will require a manure pollution prevention plan. The plan will be developed using a range of data, from pheasant manure composition studies to future soil samples.
In addition to stating their previous and future actions, Wilkerson also addressed calls for the relocation of the Bob Oke Game Farm, which have continued since the initial report was published in March. She first stated that the program hopes to continue working with the Bob Oke Game Farm, but added that it has taken the first steps to identify a possible site for relocation.
“If there's an ability to continue managing it responsibly, we will, and as I've said before, if there's an overwhelming inability to do that, then we can make other considerations,” Wilkerson said.
She went on to say that the department has identified 59 WDFW-owned properties in 19 other counties to be considered. Those sites would have to meet a list of criteria that includes considerations of the cost of transportation and relocation as well as environmental impact studies, distance from release habitat and more.
To close her presentation, Wilkerson once more recognized the importance of the issue at hand and emphasized the department’s follow-through on the necessary mitigation efforts. She also recognized the game farm’s role in the recent water contamination, referring to the farm's nitrogen impact as one of multiple “contributing factors.”
“We understand the community's frustration, frustration and the urgency around the issue. We are in the same place that clean water is essential,” Wilkerson said. “Since the last meeting in March, we've taken every action that we've committed to, including all that we just presented, and we've also followed all the recommendations from the technical report that we worked on together. Additionally, we've consulted with water quality experts and regulators, and are moving in a good direction with them.”
City of Centralia
In the same meeting, Centralia City Manager Thomas and Centralia Public Works Director Oien provided an update on the work being done by the city, including the city's effort to quickly install utility lines to the residents affected by the nitrogen contamination.
As part of that process, the city explained it has worked with the state to rush through a grant application for $5 million that will fund survey, design and construction of new city water and sewer lines to the homes with wells affected by nitrate contamination.
Thomas added that that money has now been officially allocated to the city, but that the city has more steps to complete, including coordination with the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation and an environmental impact study under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) before it can access that money and reimburse the city for the work it has already done to push forward the emergency utility construction.
“We currently do not have the money coming to us, but it's there,” Thomas said. “It's been obligated. We just have to go through the hoops to get there. So, I've done most of that paperwork. It's now just going through the timeline.”
According to Oien, the city is already working on the survey portion of the project and hopes to have gone through the competitive bidding process to select an engineering consultant by the time surveying is completed. The hired engineering firm would then develop the construction plan in time for the city to begin work during the next available window in the summer of 2026.
City of Centralia officials added that they will be taking more steps to improve transparency around their side of the project, with Oien agreeing to send update postcards to homes affected by nitrates or the new project as well as informing the public of ways to access information from the city of Centralia on its website.
The page is available at https://www.cityofcentralia.com/1603/Nitrates.
Lewis County
Both the present commissioners, Swope and Pollock, showed some level of frustration during the meeting, with Swope taking the time to ask a series of questions first concerning the pheasant program’s financial sustainability and moving on to the use of space at the facility. Seemingly not receiving the answers he wanted to hear, Swope finally asked the state officials to identify the game farm as the “epicenter” of the local nitrate contamination, to which state officials insisted the game farm is a contributing factor, but not the sole source.
In closing, Swope called for the game farm’s relocation, citing concerns that diminishing funding from the state could compromise the game farm's mitigation efforts.
“You just said that you guys had a reduction in funding,” Swope said. “The long-term strategy is going to require funding. So what happens when we don't get that?”
Lewis County Public Health and Social Services Director Meja Handlen during the meeting addressed more general concerns over water quality and praised the efforts of cooperation between jurisdictions to mitigate the impacts of the nitrate contamination and provide clean water to affected residents. She also took the chance to emphasize a need to focus on water quality issues countywide.
“It’s not just the people in Mayberry. It is the entire city, our county,” Handlen said. “Overall, looking at what is impacting water safety, we have overarching issues out in Packwood, in Chehalis with access to potable water to private wells, to public wells, and to Group A and Group B systems that we really need to start looking at.”
Centralia residents
Apart from the brief comment provided at the beginning of the event, the attending residents did not offer public comment, but they did show up early and waited around after the meeting finished to speak with local officials.
As the meeting came to a close, White told The Chronicle her main concerns were over transparency, but that she otherwise saw that local officials were taking the issue seriously and following through on the mitigation steps they agreed to in March.
“I have been speaking with Andy Oien at the city over the last few days and have been impressed with what's moving forward, and I'm happy to see that things are indeed moving forward instead of this going on for another five years,” she said.
She added that the Bob Oke Game Farm’s lack of a Concentrated Feeding Permit came as a shock.
To read an article about the Centralia City Council's discussion of the matter on Tuesday night, visit https://www.chronline.com/stories/centralia-mayor-councilors-call-for-closure-of-wdfw-operated-game-farm,386103.
