A 3.5-million-pound problem: More than a million chickens near Pasco have bird flu

More than a million chickens at a farm in Franklin County, Washington, are set to be destroyed because of bird flu. Officials are deliberating how to transport, bury, compost, or incinerate the birds.

Hoar frost collects like armored spikes on the trunks of rural poplars.

The stout trees define the snowy edges of vast crop fields in Franklin County, in southeast Washington, from the white blur of flat land everywhere else.

This bleak scene is made more grim when approaching Oakdell Farms off of East Sagemoor Road, where highly pathogenic avian influenza is in a commercial flock of 1,015,500 — more than a million — chickens. State and federal officials aren’t naming the farm, but there are few egg operations in Franklin County with that many fowl.

At the edge of the farm, a man in Carhartt-colored winter coveralls sits warming from the 20-degree temps in a small white pickup with a utility light flashing.