(The Center Square) – Divisions are emerging in Spokane as Democrats and Republicans on the Board of County Commissioners eye two different ways of responding to growing concerns with data centers.
The largely progressive Spokane City Council approved a one-year moratorium on data center projects last month as Avista Utilities paused negotiations with a potential large load customer.
Spokane County Commissioners Chris Jordan and Amber Waldref followed suit Monday, proposing a nine-month version for the county.
The idea immediately faced opposition from the three Republicans making up the rest of the board as the Democrats briefed their peers on Tuesday. Commissioner Al French announced plans to propose a zoning ordinance that they could vote on by the end of August to address their constituents’ concerns.
“We don’t need nine months,” French said during Tuesday’s weekly briefing meeting. “We already have a good understanding about the impacts of what these data centers mean and also what we can do to protect the community, and allow for this critical infrastructure to be developed here in Spokane County.”
The Republicans said the moratorium could give off the impression that Spokane is anti-development, pushing away projects that could provide valuable revenue to the county as they face a budget deficit.
French said the zoning ordinance proposal that he and Commissioner Josh Kerns are working on would define large-load data centers as 200 megawatts or more and limit them in heavy industrial zones. He said they could allow data centers that plan on using less electricity than that in light industrial zones.
The large-load customer that Avista was negotiating with had plans for a facility that would use up to 500 MW. Jordan said he spoke with the utility provider and found that only one customer in the county currently exceeds 25 MW, which is what he and Waldref proposed setting the threshold at.
“That could be the equivalent of half of the entire current power load of the county,” Jordan explained.
His and Waldref’s moratorium would pause the permit and application process for any future projects until towards the end of the next state legislative session to allow lawmakers to consider safeguards.
The temporary pause would also direct county staff to develop rules addressing where the county can site data centers; who the facilities would be defined in the county code; whether they should require a conditional-use permit; ratepayer protections; rules around noise, water use, efficiency, and more.
Other than the city of Spokane, officials in Seattle, Burien, Federal Way , Marysville, Millwood, Pasco, Skagit County and Snohomish County have all passed temporary data center moratoria of their own.
French and Kern’s zoning proposal would allow the process to continue under different interim rules.
Outside of defining large-load projects as 200 megawatts or more, French said he may propose zoning rules that require a few hundred feet in between data centers and residential properties, limit noise to 65 decibels at the property line, and require developers to pay for necessary infrastructure expansion.
“Infrastructure expansion for the data center should be paid by the developer,” he said. “No question at all, [it] should be paid for by the developer and that should not be passed on to the general public.”
French said the state Department of Ecology regulates water, so he wants to leave that part to them.
Kerns said the zoning ordinance is built upon best practices from the National Association of Counties.
Commissioner Mary Brooks explicitly joined French in opposition to a data center moratorium, while Kerns called the idea of taking nine months to develop regulations around data centers “laughable.”
Jordan and Waldref said they’re open to considering the zoning proposal and tackling this on a faster timeline than nine months, but still expressed support for pausing new applications in the meantime.
“If a complete permit comes through the door tomorrow, it [already] may be too late at that point to actually do any of these ideas,” Jordan responded Tuesday. “It sounds like there is an agreement here that some responsible rules are needed, but without a pause, the status quo rules are what they are.”
The board is entering a two-week recess, which county staff will use to examine the two proposals and reach out to various stakeholders before the board returns to the topic sometime around early August.