Your Land, Their Data Center — How Eminent Domain Became Big Tech's Property-Grabbing Sidekick

Your Land, Their Data Center — How Eminent Domain Became Big Tech's Property-Grabbing Sidekick

Let me tell you something that's been sitting wrong with me all week. There's a video circulating — CBS Mornings, 681,000 views in five days — of a Georgia family being told to sell their childhood home or have the state take it. Not for a highway. Not for a school. For a transmission line that will run 70 to 80 percent of its power to AI data centers.

This is where we are in 2026. The AI buildout has gone from "how do we get more GPUs" to "how do we get more power" to "how do we get your land." And the answer, increasingly, is eminent domain — a centuries-old legal tool that was meant for roads, schools, and public utilities, now being weaponized to run transmission lines to private server farms.

I've been running hosting infrastructure for over a decade. I've seen the data center industry grow from a niche market to the engine of the modern internet. But what's happening right now — in Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and a dozen other states — is not growth. It's a land grab, and it's turning neighbors into enemies faster than any NIMBY protest I've ever seen.

Your Land, Their Data Center — When "Public Use" Means "Private Profit"

Atlanta, Georgia — July 20, 2026 — The headlines are piling up faster than the transmission towers. Let me walk you through what's happening on the ground, because this is not theoretical. This is people's homes.

Georgia — The Epicenter of the Eminent Domain Backlash

Let's start with the story that's getting national attention. Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, is building a 35-mile, 500-kilovolt transmission line across Coweta County. The utility says 70 to 80 percent of the electricity on that line will serve data centers. The remaining 20 to 30 percent? Residential and commercial growth, supposedly.

To build it, Georgia Power is acquiring more than 300 parcels of land. In some cases, homes are being demolished. The Brown family — Ansley Brown grew up in that house, her mother Angela bought it through a government loan program in 2003 — was given an ultimatum: sell, or face eminent domain proceedings. They sold. Ansley told CBS News, "It's ours. You can't tear down 35 miles of rural Georgia and it not hurt something or somebody."

Georgia Power spokesperson Holly Lovett says eminent domain is "always a last resort" and less than 1 percent of their land transactions involve it. The company offers 125 percent of appraised fair market value as a starting point. But when you're telling a single mother who bought her home through a government program that she has to leave, no percentage markup makes that right.

And this isn't just one family. Multiple homes in Coweta County face the same fate. The company has signed data center contracts totaling more than 9,000 megawatts — 80 percent of all new generation capacity in Georgia is earmarked for data centers. Meanwhile, the average Georgia Power residential bill has climbed from $150 to $225 per month over the past two years.

So let me ask you something. If your electric bill is going up 50 percent and your neighbor is being forced off their land so an AI company can train its next model, who exactly is this "public use" serving?

Ohio — Google's $500 Million Data Center and 325 Angry Neighbors

About 500 miles north of Atlanta, in American Township near Lima, Ohio, the same drama is playing out with a different cast. Google is building a $500 million data center spanning 373 acres — larger than the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The neighbors, all 14,538 of them in American Township, are furious.

Here's what Google did. It used shell companies to hide its identity. It signed non-disclosure agreements with county commissioners. It kept the whole thing secret for years. When residents finally found out who was building the massive construction site next to their homes, the permits were already approved.

Of 325 written public comments obtained by Signal Cleveland via records request, only two expressed support. Two. Out of 325. The rest raised concerns about secrecy, air quality, noise, electric costs, and water wells going dry from construction dewatering.

And here's the kicker. Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman — a Republican who lives just a few miles from the site — has been leading a charge at the Statehouse to impose new rules on data centers and roll back their tax breaks. But on Google's specific project in his own backyard? Quiet. Stayed out of the fray entirely. The golden rule, as one resident put it: "The one with the gold makes the rules."

The Ohio EPA granted the data center an air permit for 115 gas-fired backup generators that will emit 236 tons of nitrogen oxides and 96 tons of carbon dioxide every year. Residents reported construction dust causing skin inflammation, eye swelling, and hospital visits. Google apologized for the dewatering issues but the project marches on.

Three in five Ohioans now view data centers unfavorably in their hometown, according to Bowling Green State University polling. That number is 7 in 10 nationally, per Gallup. The public has spoken. The question is whether anyone in power is listening.

Indiana, Pennsylvania, Maryland — The Ring of Fire Spreads

This is not a Georgia problem or an Ohio problem. It's everywhere.

In Indiana, Google is planning another data center near Monrovia — this one drawing up to 1,200 megawatts of electricity. AES Indiana is proposing a 10-mile, 345-kilovolt transmission line, and consumer advocacy groups are already warning that AES could use eminent domain to acquire the route. The IndyStar opinion page ran a piece titled, "Eminent domain should be off the table for projects that serve one private customer." That about sums it up.

In Pennsylvania, farmers in Union and Lycoming counties are opposing a PPL Electric Utilities line that would serve a PNK Group data center complex at Great Stream Commons. At a Farm Bureau event, landowners tied the dispute directly to eminent domain reform, arguing that farmers should be more fully compensated if land is taken for a project that primarily serves a single corporate customer.

In Maryland, the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project — a proposed 67-mile transmission line across Baltimore, Frederick, and Carroll counties — has landowners posting signs that read "No eminent domain for corporate gain." The utility, PSEG, has floated using eminent domain if landowners don't agree voluntarily. PSEG says the upgrades are needed to prevent grid congestion. Residents say it's a giveaway to data center companies.

And this is just what's in the news this week. There are similar fights in Virginia (Dominion Energy's Golden to Mars project, with a 185-foot power pole planned in an Ashburn homeowner's yard), in New Mexico (Oracle's $165 billion Project Jupiter being rejected by regulators twice), in New York (Governor Hochul's one-year moratorium on new large data centers), and in Illinois (a village near Chicago bracing for Constellation Energy's land acquisitions).

The Secondary Bottleneck Nobody's Talking About — Community Consent as a Structural Constraint

I've written before about the GPU shortage, the power grid crisis, and the cooling bottleneck. But there's a less visible dimension to the AI infrastructure buildout that I think is going to be the defining constraint of 2027: community consent.

The numbers are staggering. There are more than 3,000 data centers in the U.S. and another 1,500 in development, according to Pew. These facilities need power — about 4 percent of the nation's total electricity in 2024, and growing fast. To get that power to them, utilities need transmission lines. To build transmission lines, they need land. And when landowners say no, they're reaching for eminent domain.

But here's the thing. The Supreme Court's 2005 Kelo v. New London decision — which allowed economic development to qualify as "public use" — triggered a massive backlash. 44 states enacted eminent domain reform laws in response. Property rights groups are watching this data center fight like hawks, and they have the legal infrastructure and the public sentiment on their side.

The difference between 2024 and now is the scale. Kelo was about a single Pfizer facility in New London, Connecticut. This is about thousands of parcels across dozens of states, hundreds of transmission lines, and the most valuable companies in the world on one side versus individual homeowners and farmers on the other. The optics could not be worse.

Erin Brockovich — yes, that Erin Brockovich — has launched a nationwide tracking map of data center controversies. A national day of protest against data centers was held on July 18. The Fortune headline says it all: "Power companies are using eminent domain to seize land for data centers as 70% of Americans say not in my backyard."

When 70 percent of the country is against you, you don't have a permitting problem. You have a legitimacy problem.

What This Actually Means for Independent Hosting Providers

Alright, let me bring this home for the people who are running actual hosting businesses. Because I know what you're thinking: "Allan, this is about hyperscale data centers and utility politics. What does that have to do with my 20-rack colo operation?"

More than you think. Here's what I'm watching.

First — The regulatory backlash against data centers is going to make it harder to build new capacity everywhere, not just for the hyperscalers. When states start passing moratoriums, tightening permitting, and reforming eminent domain laws, those restrictions apply to the whole industry. If you're planning to expand your facility in the next 18 months, start the permitting process now. The window is closing.

Second — The public sentiment shift is real, and it affects your customers. Enterprise clients who are already nervous about putting workloads in the cloud are going to get more nervous when they see headlines about homes being seized for AI data centers. Your value proposition — "we're local, we're human, we're not part of the machine" — gets stronger every time one of these stories runs.

Third — The transmission bottleneck is going to make power more expensive for everyone. Georgia Power residential bills have gone up 50 percent in two years. That pattern is going to repeat in every state where data center load is driving grid upgrades. If you're on a fixed-rate power contract, lock in extensions now. If you're on variable pricing, start modeling what a 30 to 50 percent increase looks like for your margins.

Fourth — Watch the regulatory arbitrage play. States that are hostile to data center development (New York with its moratorium, New Mexico with its Project Jupiter rejection) are going to lose tax revenue and construction jobs. States that are welcoming (Ohio with its tax breaks, Georgia with its utility-friendly eminent domain laws) are going to get the buildout but also the backlash. Pick your market carefully. I'd be looking at states with stable regulatory environments, moderate data center presence, and no active eminent domain controversies. They're the ones that will be most welcoming to independent operators in 2027.

The Structural Reality — This Squeeze Is Getting Tighter

Let me be blunt. The eminent domain fight is not a blip. It's a structural consequence of building AI infrastructure at a pace and scale that the legal system wasn't designed for.

Eminent domain was created for roads, bridges, and public utilities — projects where the benefit is shared broadly across the community. A transmission line that runs 80 percent of its power to a single private data center customer stretches the definition of "public use" to its breaking point. State courts in Oklahoma, Michigan, and Ohio have already ruled that seizing private property for purely private economic development does not qualify under their state constitutions.

The legal challenges are coming. And while utilities will probably win most of them — courts have historically deferred to power companies on condemnation — the public relations cost is already baked in. Every family that gets a forced-sale notice is another viral news story. Every farm that gets a transmission line through it is another legislator getting angry phone calls.

The AI buildout needs power. The power needs transmission lines. The lines need land. And the people who own that land are increasingly saying no. You can't put a GPU in the ground and call it a server farm if there's no juice to run it, and you can't run the juice to it if you can't get the land.

The Bottom Line

I've been watching this industry for a long time. I've seen boom cycles and bust cycles. I've seen communities welcome data centers with open arms and then regret it. But I have never seen the level of organized, bipartisan, grassroots opposition that is forming right now.

The eminent domain fight is not a niche legal debate. It is the human face of the AI infrastructure buildout. When 70 percent of Americans say they don't want data centers in their backyard, and power companies are using a 200-year-old property seizure law to build them anyway, something has to give.

For the hyperscalers, this is a cost of doing business. For the communities caught in the middle, it's their homes, their farms, and their way of life. And for independent hosting providers like us, it's both a warning and an opportunity. The warning: the regulatory environment is shifting against big infrastructure fast. The opportunity: every customer who gets burned by the hyperscaler machine is a customer who might be looking for a better alternative.

Pay attention to this one, folks. The GPU shortage gets the headlines. The power grid crisis gets the policy papers. But the eminent domain fight — that's the one that's going to shape where and how data centers get built for the next decade. And if you're not watching it, you're already behind.

— Allan Ali, Founder