Avista drops water application

Avista Corp. no longer needs the electricity from a proposed power plant on the Rathdrum Prairie and has withdrawn its controversial application to pump 2.88 million gallons of water a day out of the Rathdrum Prairie-Spokane Valley Aquifer.

Avista recently updated its 2005 resource plan, which projects the utility’s energy needs for two decades. That plan shows that Avista isn’t likely to need a combined cycle combustion turbine plant on the Rathdrum Prairie any time soon, said spokeswoman Catherine Markson.

“We are very pleased. The health of the aquifer is important to us,” Markson said. The water from the aquifer would have been used to generate steam to run the power plant.

In January, Avista added to its energy resources by acquiring the remaining half ownership of the Coyote Springs 2 plant in Boardman, Ore., and now owns 100 percent of that 275-megawatt plant, Markson said. Coyote Springs is a combined-cycle combustion turbine facility fueled by natural gas.

Environmentalists hailed the utility’s decision to withdraw its application for water from the aquifer, the sole source of drinking water for 500,000 people in the Spokane-North Idaho region.

Avista’s water right application was appealed in February 2002 to the Idaho Department of Water Resources by the Sierra Club, Idaho Conservation League, the Kootenai Environmental Alliance and the Lands Council.

“We applaud Avista’s decision,” said Rachael Paschal Osborn, one of the attorneys representing the Sierra Club and the Idaho Conservation League. “Our aquifer is too precious a resource to waste on a speculative power plant proposal.”

The Idaho Department of Water Resources denied two power plant proposals on the Rathdrum Prairie in 2002 for failing to address water conservation as required by Idaho law.

According to a 1996 report prepared for Spokane County planners, the aquifer can meet Spokane’s water needs until 2016 – if per capita demand doesn’t increase. The aquifer, which provides 88 percent of the groundwater in Spokane County, was designated a sole source of drinking water for the area under the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1978.

The proposed new water withdrawals for new power plants in Idaho, now denied or withdrawn, would have had serious implications for the Spokane River, which mixes with the aquifer in the Spokane Valley, said Stan Miller, Spokane County’s former aquifer program manager.

“Every drop we take out of the aquifer will diminish flow in the Spokane River,” Miller said. The river is already stressed by high temperatures, PCBs, phosphorus and heavy metals pollution.