SPOKANE, Wash. — Avista has paused the processing of data center energy requests in Eastern Washington, but protesters are still opposing.
Several speakers came out to the Avista Headquarters on Sunday, including a farmer from Boise, Idaho and a local tech expert who was explaining the negative impacts of the discussed data center.
Around 30 people gathered as part of this protest on Sunday.
Tech expert Jeremiah Harding says the technology is too powerful to keep the land around it clean.
“These data centers rely on massive cooling, meaning that every time one of these massive construction projects is built, they’re muddying your wells,” Harding said.
Ashliegh Mae, one of the rally’s main organizers, says the issues extend beyond the money it could cost the average customer.
“We’re running out of water rapidly,” she said. “Our land is disappearing. Our trees, which we need to breathe oxygen. Our wildlife have nowhere to go. There’s so many key things as to why these data centers should not be placed in our backyard.”
Avista said it stayed in communication with the organizers in the month leading up to the protest.
The company allowed people to park on its lot and said it helped pick a location for the protest. Security also frequently checked in while the rally was happening.
“Our number one priority is to make sure that our customers that we currently have are not impacted by any large load customer,” said Avista’s senior communications manager Jared Webley.
As of right now, the energy service request with the data center developer is still paused.
The City of Spokane also passed a one-year moratorium on the acceptance, processing, review and approval of building permit applications for new computer data centers.
A previous version of this story included a comment about 5G towers. We’ve removed that comment because it couldn’t be proven and was not related to this story.
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