Residents press Spokane County for strict water limits, PFAS protections in data‑center code

Multiple residents and technical witnesses told the Planning Commission they fear large data centers will strain West Plains aquifers and compound existing PFAS contamination. John Hancock of the West Plains Water Coalition said "on the West Plains we have a preexisting medical condition about PFAS already," urging explicit PFAS protections and restrictions on PFAS‑based cooling systems.

Speakers asked the commission to replace tiered, efficiency‑based metrics with a hard cap on consumptive water loss or a 0.0 WUE standard for high‑load facilities. Public commenters gave numerical examples: one participant warned a 0.3 WUE could scale to hundreds of millions of gallons per year for a 1,000‑MW proposal and urged a numeric cap instead of an efficiency ratio. Staff said the draft prioritizes reclaimed/reused water, closed‑loop systems, prohibits drawing from private wells, and will require feasibility and groundwater‑monitoring studies; staff committed to adding clearer effluent and monitoring metrics and identifying the data sources that inform the draft thresholds.