SPOKANE, Wash. – When you take a trip on the Numerica SkyRide above the city, you get one of the most stunning views of the Spokane River. But if you look closely enough, you see a river polluted with litter, the most noticeable of which are multiple Lime e-scooters sitting on the river banks.
“Unfortunately, our beautiful river has been used for decades to dump things,” Jerry White Jr., executive director at the Spokane Riverkeeper, said. “If you’re putting a bunch of rubber, plastic scooters with batteries that have heavy metals in them, that’s not good for aquatic life, and that’s not good for the life of the river.”
For a litany of reasons, including frequently getting tossed over Spokane’s numerous pedestrian bridges, scooters in the river have been a massive problem since Lime introduced them in 2018, with the Spokesman reporting that over 250 submerged scooters have been retrieved since 2019.
While Lime says the batteries are built with the highest waterproofing technology available, a problem can arise if the scooters are left for a long time.
“We’ve found garbage in our litter pickup program from probably the 1800s,” White Jr. said. “If we’re talking about these scooters getting deposited in the river where they’re going to stay… Those coatings aren’t going to be permanent. Ultimately, there will be pollutants released to the river.”
In 2018, Lime signed an exclusive, five-year contract with Spokane to provide e-scooter services. With the contract expiring at the end of November, interim City Council President Lori Kinnear wants to formally flesh out what party is responsible for removing scooters from the river before another deal is reached.
“Here we are with these scooters in the river; we know that they’ve got batteries that have contaminants that will leak, so they have to be removed,” Kinnear said. “Who pays? In my mind, there’s no contract unless those scooters are removed from the river by Lime.”
“Perhaps the city needs to be forward-thinking and negotiate a clause in (the contract) where Lime does help out, specifically with retrieving those scooters,” White Jr. said.
