GOLDENDALE — Data centers, road striping and dying software all came up during the July 7 Klickitat County Commissioners meeting.
Public Works Director Jeff Hunter said the department had received a number of requests to add striping to Snowden Road, but pointed out the standard manual suggests it's appropriate to edge stripe rural arterials and collectors with an average daily traffic count of 3,000, and Snowden, at last count had 1,331. That wouldn't preclude the county if it wanted to spend the funds.
But, he added, "The biggest thing I've learned in all my years doing traffic engineering, is you need to be consistent. If you stripe one road and you don't stripe another one that has the same characteristics, and something happens out there, then the liability issue becomes bigger because they're going to say, 'Well, you striped that. How come you didn't stripe this?'"
Another concern is that regulations now require striping must be done with water-based paint, which will have to be redone each year. Hunter agreed to come back next week with more information on what other roads would also have to be striped each year, and what the annual cost will be.
The project is not in this year's budget, and no grants are available for striping
And a new unexpected cost is likely to come the county's way. Sharon Carter of Senior Services reported that the master software that runs the whole public transportation network is starting to fail.
"In the last months, we've had failures in the software, which is extremely debilitating and stressful," she said. "Luckily, the ITs were able to troubleshoot and get it functioning again. But it's been about six times in the last three weeks, and the company has apparently gone out of business."
She said original software was purchased before she joined the county in 2007 and the last major update was in 2014. It's critical because it includes the volunteer and paid driver schedules, all the routes and all client information.
Data centers
Much of the afternoon session was focused on data centers. With news that developers are looking at locations in Dallesport and the old aluminum plant site, commissioners considered whether any changes need to be made in ordinances or zoning before an application is filed.
Currently, the only mention of data centers in the county planning documents occurs in a 2023 code interpretation document approved by the County Planning Commission that concludes that data centers would be an outright permitted use in the county's industrial parks. But, if they want to locate in any industrially-zoned land that's not in an industrial park, a Conditional Use Permit will be required.
That's not a simple process, as Commissioner Lori Zoller emphasized. "It isn't just wide open,” she said. “You can't just walk in and lay an application down and get a permit. It's not an easy process. Every agency gets notified. They all get to weigh in. The tribe gets notified. They get to weigh in. What we do is kick it into the process so they get a hard look.”
Oregon's take on data centers
One bit of Oregon news this week may eventually affect data centers in Washington: the POWER Act (Protecting Oregonians With Energy Responsibility Act), passed in 2025, mandates a separate rate classification for large data centers (drawing over 20 megawatts), requiring them to shoulder more of the cost for electric infrastructure upgrades rather than passing the burden to residential and small commercial customers.
Using this law, the Oregon Public Utility Commission approved a 29.7% rate increase for the 18 data centers in Portland General Electric’s service area on July 7. This allowed the utility to decrease residential customer bills by 1.3%, and commercial customers by 2.1%.
Surprisingly, none of the 18 PGE-served centers, mostly clustered around Hillsboro in the Silicon Forest, are from familiar companies such as Google, X (formerly Twitter), Amazon, eBay or Microsoft. Instead, they are owned by five companies: Flexential, STACK Infrastructure, QTS Data Centers, NTT, and Digital Realty.
“Oregon needs to stop being a cheap date and making it too easy for them," said Oregon Governor Tina Kotek.
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