Editor's note: Kara Odegard, who is quoted in this story and provided a courtesy photo, is a board member of the Spokane Workers Cooperative, of which RANGE is a business member. Per our policies on editorial independence, Spokane Workers Cooperative has no knowledge of or influence on our editorial coverage.
Jeremiah Harding was not done with the Spokane County Commission by the end of its August 25 meeting.
Other folks trickled out of the room, but Harding, dressed in a red flannel and a T-shirt splattered with paint from his day job as a laborer and a smart phone on a selfie stick in hand, approached the commissioners as they shuffled their papers and prepared to leave.
Commissioner Al French quickly gathered his things and walked out. Everyone else stayed to see what Harding wanted.
“Are any of you gonna answer Brittany’s question?” he said.
Harding was referencing Brittany Anderson, the Spokanite who released a trove of documents in July that showed French had been in high-level secret discussions with a data center developer to build a facility on the West Plains — for months. Anderson’s research has since sparked a series of protests demanding transparency around data centers. During the Tuesday morning meeting, she had asked the commissioners whether a data center developer had “vested” in Spokane County, which means, in part, to apply for building permits.
The commissioners had evaded her question; Harding noticed the evasion, and didn’t want to let it slide even if the meeting was over. He kept asking questions: “Nothing moving toward land use for a data center?”
“I’m not aware of any building permits being turned into our building department,” Commissioner Josh Kerns replied.
The meeting had adjourned a few minutes earlier, so none of Harding’s questions were on the official record, but county attorney Matt Folsom later emailed Anderson to say: “The county has not received any complete land use applications for a data center.”
Spokane County residents have loudly expressed their feelings about a possible data center in the last few weeks — including at the August 27 Planning Commission meeting, where commissioners workshopped a slate of new data center regulations. Folks have protested data centers outside the Avista Corp. headquarters in the wake of revelations that data center developers had been courting the power utility. Dozens have railed against the idea at Planning Commission meetings and at the County Commission, the top lawmaking body in the county, itself.
They want county leaders to disclose any meetings they’ve had with developers before someone like Anderson — an average Spokanite with a civic streak —- has to file a records request. They want strong zoning restrictions on data centers. They want local officials to take their time making those regulations. Some, including Harding, a self-identified “conspiracy theorist,” and anarchist activist, want to ban data centers altogether in Spokane County. Others want voters to be able to weigh in on them.
In the last month and a half, hundreds of Spokane County residents have sent emails to lawmakers, attended public meetings, filed requests for public records and educated themselves about the impacts of large data centers.
They’ve moved the needle. The backlash against data center development — and the perceived secrecy surrounding data center planning — pushed the commission to do something its majority had previously said it would not: approve a moratorium.
A simmer becomes a boil
Washington state lawmakers are trying to more rigorously regulate data centers, but have so far been unsuccessful.
State Representative Beth Doglio (D-Olympia) introduced a bill at the beginning of the last legislative session that would require data centers to fund the full cost of their potential to draw massive amounts of energy. It’s an important topic: the developer French is courting wants to build a facility that would consume 1,000 megawatts at any given time — about the same amount of electricity currently consumed by all of Spokane County.
State Representative Timm Ormsby (D-Spokane) attached an amendment to that bill that would exempt data center developers from sales and use taxes in Spokane County.
Commissioner French, who noted in a recent public meeting that part of his duty is to encourage development, supported that amendment in a public hearing. In February, that bill died in committee.
But French’s testimony at the state legislature on Ormsby’s amendment caused a buzz. People around the county began murmuring about the prospect of a large data center coming to the region. But it was not clear where or when or how such a project would happen until local news organizations, including RANGE, reported in June that Avista had entertained a proposal for months from a data center developer to build a 500 megawatt facility near Spokane.
Harding and about 30 other activists protested outside the Avista headquarters on June 29, and the utility quickly stopped its conversations with the developer.
The Spokane City Council immediately began considering a year-long moratorium on new data centers, approving one in late June.
Watching this unfold, community organizer Michael Doyle roped about 100 people — Indigenous people, members of the Spokane Democratic Socialists of America and the Communist Party of Eastern Washington, union representatives, water commissioners — into an encrypted Signal chat. The goal of the participants was to demand transparency from city and county officials about their conversations with data center developers and persuade them to heavily regulate potential data centers — or even flat out ban them.
They hit the ground running, planning rallies and public actions. They set up an informational website containing much of Anderson’s research. They discussed French’s stocks in companies that make chemicals and devices for the data center industry. They commiserated about being disgusted by the commissioner’s secrecy around his conversations with developers.
Anderson, who is on the Signal chat, had been watching news about large data centers going up in places as far-flung as Argentina. On June 12, she requested records showing commissioners’ activities regarding data center developers.
At the commission’s June 21 legislative briefing session — meetings where policies are only discussed and not voted on — Jordan and Waldref introduced their proposal for a nine-month moratorium in the county. In response, French and his fellow conservative Commissioner Josh Kerns rushed to introduce their own resolution that would have created some zoning restrictions for data centers — and, crucially, a road map for approving data center applications.
The move was meant to circumvent the moratorium, and French and Kerns advocated that the county approve the resolution without any public input.
“We shouldn't be moving at the speed of government,” Kerns said. “We need to move at the speed of business and quite frankly get this taken care of by the end of August.”
On July 22, Anderson got her records back. They showed French had met with Apricus Energy Partners CEO Sean Boyd about developing a hydrogen facility and data center on the West Plains. He’d also met with Avista and the Kalispel Tribe about the proposal.
She took screenshots of many of the documents, which RANGE has reviewed, and published them on Facebook.
After that July session, the commissioners went on a scheduled break until August 11. More than 100 people showed up to the regular commission meeting that day, standing in the aisles waiting to speak.
Commission Chair Mary Brooks allowed a few dozen attendees to speak for a minute each. Many singled out French directly. Some demanded an apology for an off-hand comment the commissioner had made at a previous meeting suggesting data center opponents are “anti-American.”
The county legal and planning staff spent that scheduled break preparing a proposal for how the commission could move forward. They advised the commission to pause data center approvals for four months and had drafted a zoning regulation proposal that will be the subject of two public hearings in the coming months. Until December 15, no data centers will be approved.
A short window
The commission’s moratorium on data center development, which it calls a “pause,” will bar anyone from drawing permits to build a data center until December 15. This timeline puts Spokane far ahead of many communities across the country, where people have only learned of new data centers when they’ve already popped up in their backyards.
The effort to pause data center approvals has seemed urgent. Minority liberal commissioners Chris Jordan and Amber Waldref proposed a much longer nine-month moratorium in July. At the July 21 meeting, Jordan warned that if a developer filed a permit application before the county had imposed zoning regulations, there would be few rules to make sure it didn’t damage the local environment or economy.
A four-month pause was still a victory for those who oppose data centers.
“The community really does come together,” said state Representative Suzanne Schmidt (R-Spokane Valley). “We want economic development, but we don't want it at the expense of our families, our resources. I applaud the community for staying on top of it.”
But she clarified several times in an interview that she does not support data centers if they have significant environmental, economic or social costs.
Whatever the case for data centers, the pause has a short horizon, and most who oppose data centers say it’s not nearly enough time to come up with effective zoning regulations. County planners and the commission now have just months to regulate an industry whose technology is evolving at breakneck speed.
The New York Times recently reported that if current trends continue, the 20 million AI chips in existing data centers will become 200 million by the end of 2028, as hundreds of new facilities are built around the world.
Spokane County’s four-month pause can be extended if the commission feels it hasn’t achieved adequate restrictions. But the Spokane Environmental Policy Coalition, an advocacy group, says the pause is too short and the rules too lenient to guarantee safe data center development.
Schmidt is leaving her seat in the state House of Representatives to run for the county commission seat that Commissioner Mary Brooks will vacate at the end of her term.
Schmidt will face an opponent, Rachelle Miller, who won enough write-in votes during the August primary and will kick off her campaign the evening of September 1 on an anti-data center platform.
"People on all sides of the political spectrum are sending a resounding NO to data centers, but they are largely ignored by politicians,” Miller said in a press release announcing her campaign. “Our campaign is about giving the people in Spokane County an independent voice, not handouts for tech billionaires."
In an interview, Schmidt acknowledged the angst over data centers but pointed to a range of economic benefits she said they can bring to communities.
“There is big support from the unions to see these [data centers] move forward because it puts people to work, and it provides opportunity for apprenticeship,” she said. “Throughout my whole career, I've been involved in workforce development.”
A Brookings Institute analysis of 1,500 data centers says: “Data centers do create local jobs, though fewer than industry advocates claim. Naive estimates that fail to account for preexisting growth trends overstate the effect.”
Schmidt’s rhetoric would be unlikely to surprise Harding, the Spokanite who challenged the commission at the August meeting. Harding said the “pause” may represent only a temporary hiccup in larger designs to build the facilities.
“They've temporarily made this a forestallment on the inevitable,” he said, noting that the four-month pause might be just enough to quiet the protesters, giving the county a chance to bring in a data center. “If we the people actually do stand up, maybe we could do something about it. I just don't envision that happening.”
What’s next?
The proposed county resolution to regulate data centers, which the Planning Commission workshopped for the first time August 27, will go through at least two rounds of public comment at planning and county commission meetings before the commissioners vote on it.
It identifies a series of rules, among other requirements, for data centers, requiring developers to:
- Map any nearby aquifers, demonstrate they can and will pay for their own water and electricity resources and minimize the disruption of radio, phone and similar signals
- Locate any new power infrastructure on the site of the data center or adjacent to it
- Only discharge “minimal” amounts of water into the public domain, after they treat it
- Comply with national fire safety standards for energy storage technology
- Site electric infrastructure in safe, grounded housing
- Have an accessible water truck at the site of any construction or welding operations
- Give staff cell or wired telephones for fast communication with fire crews
- Build their facilities no closer than 1,000 feet (about three city blocks) from residentially- or commercially-zoned property lines
- Keep all structures shorter than 60 feet in height
- Create a 25-foot landscape buffer with native plant species, including at least one shade tree every 75 feet and one flowering tree every 50 feet, among other plants
- Keep noise no louder than 50 decibels at the nearest property line
When the proposed resolution was made public earlier this month, Kara Odegard, chair of the Spokane Environmental Policy Coalition, sent a letter to the commission asking it to expand the scope of the effort to regulate data centers.
She asked it to extend the moratorium to May 16, 2027, when the state legislative session will end, giving the commission the chance to harmonize its regulations with any proposed state-level law. She also asked it to expand the regulations to a broader range of facilities that can use large amounts of water.
“Let's show Spokane that you're taking this seriously, getting the right people in the room, having the conversations in a forum that allows a back and forth, that allows a thought process and a problem-solving process all in one,” Odegard said in an interview with RANGE.
Meanwhile, many activists are asking the commission to allow voters to weigh in on data centers.
Doyle is exploring whether the county could create a ballot measure to allow voters to say whether they want a data center in the county at all. But it’s a long-shot under current state law. To pose such a ballot initiative, the county would have to become a home rule jurisdiction, meaning it would have more flexibility over zoning for local industries — a long and fraught process that could have implications for county compliance with state development rules.
