A bill that would have forced the state to begin the process of relocating the Bob Oke Game Farm in Centralia is dead in committee, but another piece of legislation that would increase water quality standards for the game farm — and others like it across the state — will stay in play for at least another week.
The Washington state House of Representatives passed House Bill 2343 on Wednesday, advancing it to the state Senate just hours before a cutoff that would have ended its journey in the 2026 legislative session.
A related bill, House Bill 2668, was not so lucky, and after just escaping an earlier cutoff, it officially died in committee earlier this month.
State Reps. Peter Abbarno, R-Chehalis, and Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama, teamed up on the two bills concerning the Centralia-based Bob Oke Game Farm operated by the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife.
House Bill 2343 would require game farms operated by the state to meet the same standards for water discharge guidelines and water quality monitoring as similar facilities operated by private companies.
The House passed the bill, upping the water discharge guidelines for publicly operated game farms with full support from both parties. Ninety-seven lawmakers voted in favor of the legislation while one Republican lawmaker was excused from the floor at the time of the vote.
Ahead of the vote, both of the bill’s Republican sponsors, Abbarno and Orcutt, urged support of the bill along with Democrat lawmaker and chair of the House Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources, state Rep. Kristine Reeves, D-Federal Way.
“I think the application is statewide and I think the message can be broadcast statewide that public facilities and public agencies should be held to the exact same standards that we require (of) private facilities and private companies,” Abbarno said.
Abbarno also shared the story of the high nitrate levels in the Fords Prairie neighborhood near the game farm that originally inspired the bill. It’s a story that is already familiar to many in the Centralia area.
Over the last year and a half, studies conducted by the City of Centralia and WDFW have shown elevated levels of nitrates in local drinking water wells as high as four times the amount set by the U.S. federal government.
A study last spring verified nitrate contamination, likely from the manure of the thousands of pheasants raised by the farm, was a likely contributor to the higher-than-normal nitrate levels in the local wells. The pheasant-rearing game farm happens to sit on top of a critical aquifer that supplies water to local wells.
Since the discovery of the contamination, the county has installed point-of-use filters on one sink in each of the affected homes. The City of Centralia has also received a $5 million grant from the state in the 2025 legislative session to build out city water lines to serve those same homes as a longer term solution to the contamination.
Expressing her support for the bill, Reeves stated bluntly that her party agrees with the testimony from Abbarno and urged the chamber to vote yes on the piece of legislation. She emphasized in her remarks the importance of protecting safe drinking water access for the state's communities.
“It is all of our responsibility to protect our communities,” Reeves said. “And one of the best ways to protect our communities, madam speaker, is by holding our government entities as accountable as we hold our private sector partners.”
Orcutt commented last on the bill and also alluded to the potential damage that nitrate contamination could have on Centralia residents if nothing is done.
According to Orcutt, the city is still concerned that nitrate contamination may make its way into the city's own water supply. The lawmaker stated on the floor that if that happened the city would be coming back to the Legislature asking for as much as $50 million to solve a potential public health crisis.
Orcutt also alluded to his own efforts to have the Bob Oke Game Farm relocated entirely despite the recent failure of the bill that would have mandated that process start this year. The lawmaker argued that the bill to up water standards for state-operated game farms would be important going forward as he continues to advocate the farm’s relocation.
“This would apply to any state facility, so when we move it, it will apply there as well to make sure we’re not harming the water of anybody, because people are getting sick right now and we can't allow that to continue to happen,” Orcutt said.
House Bill 2668 would have required the WDFW to begin the process of relocating the Bob Oke Game Farm. It died in the House Capital Budget Committee early last week when the committee had an opportunity to advance the bill to the House floor and decided not to. The bill had escaped the session's first cutoff deadline just a week earlier after being passed by the House Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources on the day of the cutoff.
For previous reporting on House Bill 2668, visit https://tinyurl.com/5n8ww5sy.
House Bill 2343 to increase water discharge guidelines will now go to the Senate where it will be assigned to a legislative committee. It will need to have been passed by its initial committee by next Wednesday, Feb. 25, in order to continue its progress through the Legislature.
For previous reporting on House Bill 2343, visit https://tinyurl.com/4vfxj8p9.
