After a Friday Sept. 18, tour of the Bob Oke Game Farm with the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), Centralia City Council members said they were satisfied with mitigation efforts taken to curb nitrate contamination in the nearby aquifer.
At the same time, they renewed calls for relocating the farm and critiqued the agency's lack of communication with the public.
In an interview with The Chronicle and during a Tuesday city council meeting, Centralia Deputy Mayor Kelly Smith Johnston said the tour was a “good start” and called on WDFW to build on that momentum and engage with the council in a public meeting “even if those are hard conversations.”
It is widely believed that the thousands of pheasants that are raised by WDFW on the farm each year are the cause of the contaminated groundwater.
Smith Johnston added that she has seen good communication with city staff, but said she’s still not satisfied with efforts to engage with Centralians who are — or could be — impacted by high nitrogen levels in groundwater linked to the pheasant farm, which is located near Centralia High School.
“Working with staff, I think they work hard to be much more responsive, but we also feel like they should answer to the public,” Smith Johnston said. “I think it was a good effort and a good start, and I appreciated it. And I certainly would like to see more as we go forward.”
Members of the Centralia City Council toured the Bob Oke Game Farm on Friday, Sept. 18, starting around 9 a.m. and concluding at around 10:30 a.m. after receiving an invitation from WDFW. According to Smith Johnston, as well as Mayor Chris Brewer and other members of the council, the tour displayed recent changes to the farm intended to mitigate impacts on the area's critical aquifer, which passes under the facility and has shown rising nitrate levels in recent years.
The Chronicle was initially invited to join the tour by The city of Centralia, but according to city staff and officials, WDFW informed them that media would not be permitted to join.
That meant a quorum of the city council gathered without public oversight.
In the interest of reporting on the tour, The Chronicle spoke to Centralia city councilors and listened to their reports on the tour during the council’s Tuesday evening meeting. The Chronicle also reached out to the agency for comment.
Council members reported the facility is now operating at around half of its maximum capacity and is implementing operational changes, including rotating birds through more pens to reduce nitrate contamination in the groundwater.
According to Smith Johnston's notes from the tour, facility staff reported reducing the number of birds on site from more than 50,000 to around 23,000 in the last year.
Those changes are in addition to other steps from the agency and the state to address the water issues, including a number of wells used to monitor nitrate levels and grant funding for the city to connect impacted residents to city water free of charge.
The agency, which hasn’t publicly accepted blame for the contamination, has also said it would voluntarily pursue a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) permit, which state agencies are exempt from. Councilors said the agency expects to show progress on that front in a report to the Legislature later this year.
The mitigation measures were all implemented over roughly the last year after studies in 2025 linked high nitrate levels in water from nearby private wells to the farm.
Many of the city council members were pleased with the tour, with Councilor Adriana Garbiay even referring to it as “informative” and “amazing.”
“Part of it felt like a school field trip,” Brewer said. “Being able to learn a lot about the science of it and see how it all works. I found that fascinating, and I really do appreciate their mitigation efforts.”
At the same time, a number of councilors — either during the Tuesday meeting, over text or in brief interviews — still maintained that they stand by the council's official position that the farm needs to be relocated.
Proviso language included in the state's 2026 supplementary budget and advocated for by the region's state lawmakers — including state Reps. Peter Abbarno and Ed Orcutt — directed $50,000 to WDFW to search for other suitable sites for the farm and to continue seeking funding for eventual relocation.
The entire issue comes with nuance best described during the Tuesday meeting by Smith Johnston, who reminded the public that the council does not object to the operations of the farm in theory. The council is, generally speaking, supportive of the longheld practice of raising the birds in the interest of hunters in the state.
She and others even added that they are supportive to many of the staff members who work at the facility, including one of the lead employees at the facility — WDFW Pheasant Release Program Specialist Chris White.
Nonetheless, the council remains united that the game farm is, as Smith Johnston put it, “in the wrong spot.”
“It is on top of our permeable aquifer, and the water's 15 to 30 feet below the surface, and we have 23,000 birds doing their thing,” Smith Johnston said. “So the tradeoff for me is that if we don't tackle this nitrates issue as quickly and as strongly as we can, aggressively as we can, we could be in a position of this community having to pay for a $50 million water treatment plant.”
According to Smith Johnston, the city has estimated a treatment plant that can address high nitrate levels would cost the city around $50 million. She added that agency and state staff have claimed that relocating the farm will likely cost the state around $20 million.
Similar to Smith Johnston, Brewer applauded the chance to tour the facility and said he would like to both see a healthy relationship between the city and WDFW while also having the game farm relocated.
“At any time that anybody from the agency is welcome to give a presentation or a public comment at any one of our meetings,” Brewer said. “That invitation is evergreen. That still stands.”
The council previously invited WDFW staff to attend a Centralia City Council meeting to offer a status update on the game farm. Centralia City Manager Mike Thomas reported during the council’s Aug. 25 meeting that the agency had declined the invitation. Council members were hesitant to link their original invite to the tour invite.
Agency staffers did respond to a request for comment with written statements from both Deputy Wildlife Program Director Cynthia Wilkerson and Game Division Manager Anis Aoude. Both officials also echoed a desire to maintain the relationship with the city. Aoude thanked the council for attending the tour to see the “real-world workings of the game farm.”
“We were pleased to be able to share more about the work we do to support upland bird hunting opportunities in Washington — work that supports our Department mission and mandate and, more importantly, provides outdoorspeople of all ages and experience levels a chance to enjoy one of the many great outdoor experiences Washington has to offer,” reads the statement from Aoude.
For previous reporting by The Chronicle on the state Bob Oke Game Farm, visit https://tinyurl.com/4ttxmz2h.
