The bill adds new sections to chapters 77.12 and 90.48 RCW that require publicly owned or operated facilities where wildlife or other animals are held in numbers or circumstances that would otherwise qualify as a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) to either follow the CAFO general permit under chapter 90.48 RCW or obtain an individual discharge permit from the Department of Ecology (DOE). Permits must include a manure pollution prevention plan (with minimum elements such as production area runoff controls, land application limits, and dead animal management or DOE‑approved alternatives), a prohibition on discharges that cause or contribute to violations of DOE water quality standards, DOE enforcement protocols for permit violations, and logistical and compliance requirements including monitoring, recordkeeping, and reporting or DOE‑approved equivalent measures. This is a procedural and permitting change that subjects publicly owned facilities to CAFO permit requirements and specified permit contents. The bill also directs DOE, upon determining a publicly owned or operated facility would qualify as a CAFO, to begin applying the CAFO general permit or to issue an individual permit upon application, and states that DOE’s powers, duties, enforcement, and remedies apply to these publicly owned facilities in the same manner as to privately owned CAFOs. For determination purposes the bill treats a publicly owned facility with more than 5,000 game birds present at any point in time as a large CAFO subject to the most protective water quality standards applicable to any CAFO category, and it directs DOE to include pheasants and similar game birds in its next CAFO permit update. The bill includes legislative findings noting 2024–2025 groundwater monitoring and a November 2025 investigation that identified nitrate exceedances and contribution from pheasant manure at a game farm, and that current CAFO permit thresholds do not expressly include state‑operated game farms. The affected agencies include the Department of Fish and Wildlife (implied by placement in chapter 77.12 RCW) and the Department of Ecology, and the affected entities include publicly owned or operated game farms and other publicly owned facilities that meet CAFO criteria. The extracted text does not define “department,” “game birds,” or “similar game birds,” does not reproduce existing private CAFO threshold definitions, and does not provide a statutory effective date, specific compliance deadlines, or timing for DOE’s required permit update.

If enacted, state-run facilities that hold large numbers of animals—especially game farms operated by the Department of Fish and Wildlife—would generally have to get the same water-discharge permits and meet the same manure, monitoring, recordkeeping, reporting, and no-discharge standards that commercial concentrated animal feeding operations follow. The Department of Ecology would treat any publicly owned site with more than 5,000 game birds as a large CAFO, apply the most protective water-quality rules, and could use the same enforcement tools against those public facilities as it does for private CAFOs. The people most affected will be the Department of Fish and Wildlife and operators of publicly owned game farms, who will likely face new administrative and operational responsibilities and added costs to obtain permits, prepare and implement manure pollution prevention plans, conduct monitoring and reporting, and upgrade runoff or dead-animal management as needed; they also face a higher risk of enforcement and remediation expenses if pollution is linked to their operations. Residents on private wells in the Fords Prairie area—cited in the bill’s findings—are the intended beneficiaries of stronger protections. Important details remain unclear from the provided text, including exact definitions (for example of “department” or “game birds”), the timing of DOE’s permit update, and any specific compliance deadlines, so the timing and full scale of costs and changes are uncertain.