Beginning July 1, Portland utility customers will pay upwards of $100 a month for water, sewer and stormwater services – surpassing an arbitrary yet significant milestone.

Avista Utilities is proposing to eliminate a $3.50 transaction charge on debit and credit card payments, which cumulatively cost residential customers hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

The owner of the Box Canyon Dam in Northeast Washington could be scrambling for new buyers for its electricity if a large newsprint plant closes or cuts back operations.

The city of Spokane wants utility customers to update basic information provided to the city to improve how it interacts with them. The city wants all customers to provide the name of the person who owns a property, the address of that property, a mailing address if it’s different, a phone number and an email account.

Plans for a proposed $2.5 billion reservoir system to generate power south of Goldendale have found an unlikely partner: a Chinese hydropower company.

An ongoing audit of taxes paid by telephone companies operating in Spokane has turned up $700,000 in unexpected funds for the city, including more than $500,000 in unpaid taxes, interest and penalties from CenturyLink. Along with funds from T-Mobile, the money discovered so far comes from just two companies, and city officials say there’s likely more to come, though they couldn’t predict how much in unpaid tax remains. “That’s a number I can’t even tell you. There’s no way of knowing,” said Tim Dunivant, the city’s budget director, noting that every telephone company operating in Spokane will have its tax bill examined. “All the big ones. Even some of the small ones. Verizon we just completed, and everything was fine.”

If you flush less, you pay less. That’s the idea behind Spokane’s proposed sewage rates for the next three years. According to the plan, which will be considered by the Spokane City Council on Monday, apartment dwellers and the bottom 20 percent of water users will be given discounts on their monthly sewage bills. Multifamily residences would pay $2 a month less, and low water users would see their monthly bills shaved by up to $5.

A new tavern, the Tamarack Public House, will soon join the list of eating and drinking establishments adding to downtown Spokane’s vitality and amenities. But the Tamarack’s century-old building needed a sprinkler system, an added cost that could have tanked the project. So the Spokane City Council will vote Sept. 8 to create a fund carved from utility reserves that will help pay the costs – up to $40,000 – of improving utility service to the Tamarack, which is adjacent to The Spokesman-Review courtyard, and similar projects.

Avista plans to raise rates again this winter, but not as much as the Spokane-based utility first proposed six months ago. A typical customer in Washington would pay $2.10 more for electricity and $3.62 more for natural gas each month starting Jan. 1, 2015, under a negotiated rate settlement announced Monday.

A typical Avista customer in Washington would pay $2.10 more for electricity and $3.62 more for natural gas each month starting Jan. 1, 2015, under a negotiated rate settlement announced today.

Burned cables, telephone poles and power lines have cut off of all power, phone and internet services in several Central Washington towns hit by wildfires.

Monitoring electricity use will be faster and easier for Inland Power and Light and its members after the Spokane-based utility upgrades all 39,000 meters across its service area next year. The nonprofit cooperative picked Liberty Lake-based Itron Inc. to supply the advanced meters and Tantalus, a North Carolina company, to provide the “smart grid” communications equipment.

Spokane’s trash, water and sewage bills will rise 2.9 percent next year. The Spokane City Council adopted rate increases Monday that were proposed by Mayor David Condon. The votes were 5-1.

We talk, text and increasingly read the news on our smartphones. But we’re not just ignoring those sitting near us with this behavior. We’re also affecting the city of Spokane.