Automatic captions, reformatted for reading: sentence case, paragraph breaks, and
timestamps at their original cue positions. Word order is unchanged. Caption
mishearings are left as recorded.
[00:00:00]
So, um a lot of this uh created and started when the board was on its uh summer break. Break. So, this the first opportunity that I had to actually respond to some of the uh rumors, fear-mongering, conspiracy theories, and a bunch of other uh nonsense that quite frankly uh we heard today. Um and so I'm going to set the record straight about my involvement in this uh project. And uh then I'll also post my comments to my webpage so that those that didn't see fit to stay can at least be enlightened by it. About 3 years ago, I attended a conference for the american public transportation association. And at that conference, one of the sessions was hydrogen fuel of the future.
[00:00:57]
And uh two of the speakers at that conference one was from a transit agency in florida, and the other one from the transit agency in southern california. And they were talking about how they'd converted their entire fleet over to electric only to have their fleet isolated when there was a hurricane in florida and when there were wind storms or fire storms in southern california. California. So, they started the process of finding an alternative fuel that was reliable. Uh so, they ended up um uh coalescing around hydrogen as a fuel of the future. It's green fuel. It only puts out a mist out of the exhaust pipe, not fumes or any other kind of air pollutants. So, I was intrigued and started the process of learning more about that.
[00:01:53]
Then uh discovered that the State of Washington, the legislature, uh has set a goal uh to eliminate diesel fuel by the year 2030. Diesel fuel is what uh keeps our semi trucks on the road to deliver goods. It also keeps our farm industry going. And uh one of the State boards that I sit on, freight mobility strategic investment board, the trucking industry was in arms because if they had to convert their semis to electric, it's half of the payload. Payload. And so they'd have to cut the payload by half to be able to accommodate for the batteries. Batteries. Farmers are also impacted, and in fact, the State of Washington, from what I'm being told, is losing a farm a day because the cost of farming and the generational aspects of farming uh are just not what they used to be.
[00:02:56]
Kids are not deciding to uh to farm anymore. They want to go to uh pursue other careers. So, why am I involved? It's because by State law, rcw 36.01.085, County commissioners are responsible for the economic development programs that happen within their counties. That's what I do. That's what I focus on is bringing new jobs and new industries to Spokane County. And in fact, the growth management act, 36.70a.2020, also establishes economic development as a goal. So, about 2 and 1/2 years ago, I got in contact with a hydrogen developer, and we started to see if a manufacturing facility in Spokane was even feasible. Um I had some very specific concerns right out of the gate.
[00:03:57]
One, protecting this region to include its water and electricity rates. I just was not interested in bringing new industry to Spokane that would either one, negatively impact our water or two, negatively impact electrical rates for our ratepayers cuz I am one of those ratepayers. So, what the developer was talking about doing was using waste water, water that already was consumed and sent down the toilet, using waste water as the water source, and solar panel farm to provide the energy. The other byproduct of uh developing hydrogen is also ammonia. And ammonia can go then back into the fields and help our ag industry uh increase their production rate per acre. Acre.
[00:04:50]
The that data center was never even part of the conversation when we started down this road. It was only a year ago the developer said, "well, we can lower the cost of production on the hydrogen if we preheat the water through a data center." center." so, that is how that conversation started. Started. Prior to that point, I'd already been contacted by three other developers that wanted to do data centers. And because my threshold was one, protecting our water, two, protecting the rates for our ratepayers, all three of those projects fell by the wayside. Didn't move forward. So, as the project continued to mature and find out whether um the elements necessary to protect this region could be put into place.
[00:05:55]
The conversation nationally started to really ramp up. And in fact, just 2 weeks ago the national association of counties had their annual meeting and at that meeting they presented a standard for data centers that counties could go to and and adopt. Well, commissioner kurtz and I actually prior to finding that the um the recommendation from naco had already started the process of saying "how can we protect our County? How can we protect our region? And do it in a way to where you know, we don't have to wait for a year uh to provide assurances to the public. Let's see if we could do something more uh timely." timely." so, we did present a possible interim zoning ordinance that would put some controls around data centers.
[00:06:56]
It would also put some controls off the uh around use of the water and electric so that it would not impact our ratepayers and that no public money, not a single nickel of public money would be used to support the construction of a data center. There's no reason for using public money to build out private industry like this. They can pay for their own cost. So, so, as the project continued to develop uh as it turns out, they're actually going to buy their energy from another State and transfer that energy into the State into Spokane. So, it won't affect our rates.
[00:07:50]
They're using waste water, water that otherwise would go down the toilet and through the um uh treatment facilities. I'll use a closed loop system, so that there'd be no water out of the aquifer, and I don't care whether it's the aquifer on the west plains or the Spokane rathdrum prairie aquifer. There'd be no potable water used in the facility. It's interesting, because the largest water consumer on the west plains is actually collins aerospace. They use significantly more water than a data center ever could consume. And they're served out of the Spokane rathdrum prairie aquifer by the City of Spokane. The other negative around data centers is the noise created and the pollution created by the diesel powered generators. Well, well, what they're talking about doing is uh providing uh backup generation through hydrogen.
[00:08:58]
And again, hydrogen doesn't produce either air pollution or the noise that um the diesels uh provide. The data center conversation is unfortunate. Unfortunate. From my standpoint, I've not been a proponent of data centers. I've already had three other developers try and do one on the west plains, and uh they could never get out of the starting gate. Gate. Uh my goal here is hydrogen. If the farming community has to go to battery-powered harvesters, combines, plows, that's new equipment they've got to build, but that's also an electric grid that has to be expanded to provide the power to fuel those batteries.
[00:10:02]
Farming community doesn't have that kind of money. The trucking industry doesn't have the kind of money to go to battery uh driven um semis. So, that's why the hydrogen fuel, a clean fuel, was so attractive from my standpoint. I'm trying to figure out how do we get to continue to thrive as a community in when diesel fuels, uh if the legislature has their way, will no longer be a viable. Tim ormsby, a democrat, floated a bill in this last legislative session to allow Spokane County to be competitive with other counties in the State that already enjoy a tax exemption for data centers that we do not have.
[00:10:58]
We are excluded from that. And so, uh I did testify at that hearing in support of uh economic tools for Spokane County to make us competitive with other counties in the State. Riccelli, senator riccelli, also championed that in the State senate. So, here you have a republican and the democrats working together to try and find a path forward for this community. So, let me just address some of the conspiracy theories that are out there. Fires were set to clear land for data center. Center. No. No. The land underneath where the fires occurred are residential zoned land. You can't build a data center there even if you wanted to.
[00:11:57]
Imminent domain to acquire the land for economic development, that's against the State constitution. That can't happen in the State of Washington. Washington. I have no no, zero financial interest in any property on the west plains or any project proposed for the west plains. Plains. Secret meetings? There were no secret meetings. Every all the meetings were listed in my calendar. You discovered them with the public records request. They're right out there. I've been a an opponent a proponent of this uh hydrogen project for 2 and 1/2 years. There's no secrets uh about this. I've been out in the public. Public. I've been in before boards. I've been through um even uh meetings here at the County.
[00:12:52]
County. So, there's no secrets. Nothing that's done under uh enclosed doors. The attacks about the data center have now become personal. Personal. Personal. Not about the issue. Not about the topic, but personal. Doing a moratorium doesn't guarantee an outcome. And if you want to see evidence of that, the City of Spokane has passed three moratoriums for Latah valley. And they haven't solved a single problem. Problem. All they've done is created false hope. With regard to the statement about patriotism, insinuate that anybody that opposed the data center was unpatriotic.
[00:13:50]
Unpatriotic. No, what I said was and we have the tape. We have I we don't have it here, but I can play the tape for you. I'd be happy to do that. What I said is that it's been suggested that some think that being opposed to it that wasn't my comment. That was what that was part of the public uh conversation. I'm a proud marine veteran, sir. And I did I didn't I I didn't accuse anybody of not being unpatriot unpatria unpatriotic if you didn't support. What I said is that's part of the conversation that's out there. The fbi is doing investigations with regard to that. That's a whole separate topic. Anyway, I have my comments here.
[00:14:45]
I'm going to publish them to my website so everybody in this everybody can see them and hopefully we can get back to talking about the issue, talking about how and if we are going to do data centers and how do we protect the environment. I've lived here in Spokane County since 1977. Uh I plan on dying here. Uh this is my home. I'm not going to do anything to jeopardize it. I'm a ratepayer with a vista. I'm not anxious to pay and subsidize any private business. And I drink the water out of the aquifer. Aquifer. So, so, this is my home as much as it is yours. And I'm going to do what I can to protect it. So, thank you, madam chair.
Automatic captions, reformatted for reading: sentence case, paragraph breaks, and
timestamps at their original cue positions. Word order is unchanged. Caption
mishearings are left as recorded.
[00:00:00]
So, um a lot of this uh created and started when the board was on its uh summer break. Break. So, this the first opportunity that I had to actually respond to some of the uh rumors, fear-mongering, conspiracy theories, and a bunch of other uh nonsense that quite frankly uh we heard today. Um and so I'm going to set the record straight about my involvement in this uh project. And uh then I'll also post my comments to my webpage so that those that didn't see fit to stay can at least be enlightened by it. About 3 years ago, I attended a conference for the american public transportation association. And at that conference, one of the sessions was hydrogen fuel of the future.
[00:00:57]
And uh two of the speakers at that conference one was from a transit agency in florida, and the other one from the transit agency in southern california. And they were talking about how they'd converted their entire fleet over to electric only to have their fleet isolated when there was a hurricane in florida and when there were wind storms or fire storms in southern california. California. So, they started the process of finding an alternative fuel that was reliable. Uh so, they ended up um uh coalescing around hydrogen as a fuel of the future. It's green fuel. It only puts out a mist out of the exhaust pipe, not fumes or any other kind of air pollutants. So, I was intrigued and started the process of learning more about that.
[00:01:53]
Then uh discovered that the State of Washington, the legislature, uh has set a goal uh to eliminate diesel fuel by the year 2030. Diesel fuel is what uh keeps our semi trucks on the road to deliver goods. It also keeps our farm industry going. And uh one of the State boards that I sit on, freight mobility strategic investment board, the trucking industry was in arms because if they had to convert their semis to electric, it's half of the payload. Payload. And so they'd have to cut the payload by half to be able to accommodate for the batteries. Batteries. Farmers are also impacted, and in fact, the State of Washington, from what I'm being told, is losing a farm a day because the cost of farming and the generational aspects of farming uh are just not what they used to be.
[00:02:56]
Kids are not deciding to uh to farm anymore. They want to go to uh pursue other careers. So, why am I involved? It's because by State law, rcw 36.01.085, County commissioners are responsible for the economic development programs that happen within their counties. That's what I do. That's what I focus on is bringing new jobs and new industries to Spokane County. And in fact, the growth management act, 36.70a.2020, also establishes economic development as a goal. So, about 2 and 1/2 years ago, I got in contact with a hydrogen developer, and we started to see if a manufacturing facility in Spokane was even feasible. Um I had some very specific concerns right out of the gate.
[00:03:57]
One, protecting this region to include its water and electricity rates. I just was not interested in bringing new industry to Spokane that would either one, negatively impact our water or two, negatively impact electrical rates for our ratepayers cuz I am one of those ratepayers. So, what the developer was talking about doing was using waste water, water that already was consumed and sent down the toilet, using waste water as the water source, and solar panel farm to provide the energy. The other byproduct of uh developing hydrogen is also ammonia. And ammonia can go then back into the fields and help our ag industry uh increase their production rate per acre. Acre.
[00:04:50]
The that data center was never even part of the conversation when we started down this road. It was only a year ago the developer said, "well, we can lower the cost of production on the hydrogen if we preheat the water through a data center." center." so, that is how that conversation started. Started. Prior to that point, I'd already been contacted by three other developers that wanted to do data centers. And because my threshold was one, protecting our water, two, protecting the rates for our ratepayers, all three of those projects fell by the wayside. Didn't move forward. So, as the project continued to mature and find out whether um the elements necessary to protect this region could be put into place.
[00:05:55]
The conversation nationally started to really ramp up. And in fact, just 2 weeks ago the national association of counties had their annual meeting and at that meeting they presented a standard for data centers that counties could go to and and adopt. Well, commissioner kurtz and I actually prior to finding that the um the recommendation from naco had already started the process of saying "how can we protect our County? How can we protect our region? And do it in a way to where you know, we don't have to wait for a year uh to provide assurances to the public. Let's see if we could do something more uh timely." timely." so, we did present a possible interim zoning ordinance that would put some controls around data centers.
[00:06:56]
It would also put some controls off the uh around use of the water and electric so that it would not impact our ratepayers and that no public money, not a single nickel of public money would be used to support the construction of a data center. There's no reason for using public money to build out private industry like this. They can pay for their own cost. So, so, as the project continued to develop uh as it turns out, they're actually going to buy their energy from another State and transfer that energy into the State into Spokane. So, it won't affect our rates.
[00:07:50]
They're using waste water, water that otherwise would go down the toilet and through the um uh treatment facilities. I'll use a closed loop system, so that there'd be no water out of the aquifer, and I don't care whether it's the aquifer on the west plains or the Spokane rathdrum prairie aquifer. There'd be no potable water used in the facility. It's interesting, because the largest water consumer on the west plains is actually collins aerospace. They use significantly more water than a data center ever could consume. And they're served out of the Spokane rathdrum prairie aquifer by the City of Spokane. The other negative around data centers is the noise created and the pollution created by the diesel powered generators. Well, well, what they're talking about doing is uh providing uh backup generation through hydrogen.
[00:08:58]
And again, hydrogen doesn't produce either air pollution or the noise that um the diesels uh provide. The data center conversation is unfortunate. Unfortunate. From my standpoint, I've not been a proponent of data centers. I've already had three other developers try and do one on the west plains, and uh they could never get out of the starting gate. Gate. Uh my goal here is hydrogen. If the farming community has to go to battery-powered harvesters, combines, plows, that's new equipment they've got to build, but that's also an electric grid that has to be expanded to provide the power to fuel those batteries.
[00:10:02]
Farming community doesn't have that kind of money. The trucking industry doesn't have the kind of money to go to battery uh driven um semis. So, that's why the hydrogen fuel, a clean fuel, was so attractive from my standpoint. I'm trying to figure out how do we get to continue to thrive as a community in when diesel fuels, uh if the legislature has their way, will no longer be a viable. Tim ormsby, a democrat, floated a bill in this last legislative session to allow Spokane County to be competitive with other counties in the State that already enjoy a tax exemption for data centers that we do not have.
[00:10:58]
We are excluded from that. And so, uh I did testify at that hearing in support of uh economic tools for Spokane County to make us competitive with other counties in the State. Riccelli, senator riccelli, also championed that in the State senate. So, here you have a republican and the democrats working together to try and find a path forward for this community. So, let me just address some of the conspiracy theories that are out there. Fires were set to clear land for data center. Center. No. No. The land underneath where the fires occurred are residential zoned land. You can't build a data center there even if you wanted to.
[00:11:57]
Imminent domain to acquire the land for economic development, that's against the State constitution. That can't happen in the State of Washington. Washington. I have no no, zero financial interest in any property on the west plains or any project proposed for the west plains. Plains. Secret meetings? There were no secret meetings. Every all the meetings were listed in my calendar. You discovered them with the public records request. They're right out there. I've been a an opponent a proponent of this uh hydrogen project for 2 and 1/2 years. There's no secrets uh about this. I've been out in the public. Public. I've been in before boards. I've been through um even uh meetings here at the County.
[00:12:52]
County. So, there's no secrets. Nothing that's done under uh enclosed doors. The attacks about the data center have now become personal. Personal. Personal. Not about the issue. Not about the topic, but personal. Doing a moratorium doesn't guarantee an outcome. And if you want to see evidence of that, the City of Spokane has passed three moratoriums for Latah valley. And they haven't solved a single problem. Problem. All they've done is created false hope. With regard to the statement about patriotism, insinuate that anybody that opposed the data center was unpatriotic.
[00:13:50]
Unpatriotic. No, what I said was and we have the tape. We have I we don't have it here, but I can play the tape for you. I'd be happy to do that. What I said is that it's been suggested that some think that being opposed to it that wasn't my comment. That was what that was part of the public uh conversation. I'm a proud marine veteran, sir. And I did I didn't I I didn't accuse anybody of not being unpatriot unpatria unpatriotic if you didn't support. What I said is that's part of the conversation that's out there. The fbi is doing investigations with regard to that. That's a whole separate topic. Anyway, I have my comments here.
[00:14:45]
I'm going to publish them to my website so everybody in this everybody can see them and hopefully we can get back to talking about the issue, talking about how and if we are going to do data centers and how do we protect the environment. I've lived here in Spokane County since 1977. Uh I plan on dying here. Uh this is my home. I'm not going to do anything to jeopardize it. I'm a ratepayer with a vista. I'm not anxious to pay and subsidize any private business. And I drink the water out of the aquifer. Aquifer. So, so, this is my home as much as it is yours. And I'm going to do what I can to protect it. So, thank you, madam chair.