Lawmakers find cutting edge – here

Everyone likes positive feedback, and no one knows that better than a politician.

Still, it was good to get some strokes from members of the state House Technology, Energy and Communications Committee who were in Spokane Tuesday to visit a few of the city’s cutting edge businesses, and even those not so cutting edge.

Led by chairman Jeff Morris, D-Anacortes, eight of the committee’s 11 members and some staff began a long day’s journey at ReliOn Corp., and wound up with a stop at the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute. Also on the agenda were HollisterStier Laboratories, Itron and the Spokane County Conservation District.

If that last stop seems a little off the beat for techies, think biodiesel.

One of the few good provisions in the otherwise regrettable energy bill that President Bush signed Monday is one authored by Sen. Maria Cantwell, which provides federal support for the production of ethanol from agricultural waste, not just specific grains. Good for us, because Iogen Corp., the Canadian company that developed a way to make so-called cellulose ethanol, could announce by Labor Day a decision to locate a production plant in southern Idaho. Morris says Washington officials hope Iogen will put a second plant somewhere in Eastern Washington that, coupled with research conducted at Idaho and Washington State universities, would create a biofuels cluster.

“That cluster is really going to explode in the next 10 years,” Morris says. Washington, he adds, put itself in the forefront of biofuels development four years ago with a package of legislation that encouraged the construction of new storage tanks, and requires state agencies to include biofuels in their fuel purchases.The state ferry system alone buys 20 million gallons of diesel annually.

The conservation district, which is leading efforts to get a biodiesel plant in the area, estimates that investing $11 million in an oilseed crusher could create more than 300 jobs.

Morris says contracts between Iogen and southern Idaho growers tie oilseed prices to oil prices, a first that should make those crops very lucrative.

On another matter, Morris says his committee is also trying to figure out how to provide $1.2 million for upgrading the Internet link between Western and Eastern Washington. A gigapop connection would vastly increase the speed of the network, but the University of Washington, the network’s administrator, does not want that money to come out of its capital budget.

Morris says members of his committee were impressed not just by the basic science under way in Spokane, but by the growth in manufacturing associated with that advanced technology. In the two years since the committee last visited ReliOn, for example, the company boosted sales of its modular fuel cell units to more than 200 from just a handful.

At HollisterStier, the members learned the company is adding a second $5 million freeze-dryer to increase its storage capacity. The company has added more than 100 employees since the committee’s last visit, Morris says, adding that a sales tax exemption for new equipment helped make the purchase of the first unit feasible.

“People don’t realize what’s going on here,” Morris says. “There’s really an awful lot of things to get excited about.”

Rep. Larry Haler, R-Richland, was impressed by the level of technology. Haler works for Fluor Hanford, the primary U.S. Department of Energy contractor on the nuclear reservation.

“I didn’t know you had this much up here going for you,” Haler says, who admits he still thought of Spokane in terms of old industries like Kaiser Aluminum, not an Itron Corp. or HollisterStier.

He says ReliOn’s fuel cells would make sense at Hanford, which depends on nickel-cadmium batteries for reserve power. “I’m amazed,” he says.

Haler says some companies in the Tri-Cities have become so dependent on federal contracts they do not feel the need to innovate as much as their Spokane counterparts, who have no such reliable customer. Comments made by the business leaders he met also indicate local government leaders are more responsive to business needs than is the case in other areas, he says.

Morris says the nation’s ongoing economic expansion has been unique for Washington, which has been among the states with the most significant turnarounds. He credits the innovation and enterprise his committee found on Tuesday.

“You’re seeing it right here on the ground in Spokane,” he says.