Last week, Avista announced that it is working with a new large-load customer expected to require an initial electric demand of 125 megawatts, with projected demand increasing to 500 megawatts by 2032. According to Avista, the customer could ultimately consume more than half of the electricity currently used by all residential and business customers in Spokane County. While the customer has not been publicly identified, projects of this magnitude are commonly associated with large-scale computing infrastructure, including data centers and artificial intelligence operations.

For Spokane Riverkeeper, this announcement raises a central question about how this level of industrial demand would interact with the Spokane River system and the Spokane Valley–Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer, which together form the foundation of the region’s water and energy system

The Spokane River is entering a long process that will shape its future for decades, and now is the time for the public to get involved if you want to make a meaningful difference in what that future looks like. The City of Spokane has started the Upriver Dam relicensing process by filing its pre-application document with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Learn more about the process, and get involved in the river’s future!

Hangman Creek is known for it’s muddy waters that frequently follow rain on snow events or thunderstorms-an unfortunate result of losing the riparian vegetation and floodplains in the watershed. However, the muddy waters that followed late May’s thunderstorms in 2026 was worse than we’ve ever seen.