Utilities’ plans for high-voltage transmission lines serving power-intensive artificial intelligence campuses are prompting landowners to challenge whether private property may be condemned for projects built largely around a small number of technology customers.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
The rapid construction of artificial intelligence data centers is producing a new generation of property-rights disputes as electric utilities seek land for transmission lines capable of supplying enormous concentrations of power to hyperscale computing campuses.
Landowners in Wisconsin, Georgia, Ohio and other states are questioning whether the government’s eminent domain authority can lawfully be used for infrastructure developed primarily to serve privately owned data centers.
At the center of the debate is the Constitution’s public-use requirement, which permits private property to be taken for qualifying public purposes when the owner receives just compensation.
Electric transmission lines have traditionally satisfied that standard because regulated utilities provide power to the public. The emerging legal question is whether that justification remains sufficient when a new line would not have been proposed without the demands of one data center or a small group of technology companies.
Utilities say the projects serve more than individual customers by increasing grid capacity, improving reliability and supporting regional economic growth. Opponents argue that the broader benefits are being used to justify what are effectively private infrastructure projects backed by the government’s condemnation power.
The disputes are intensifying as artificial intelligence development sharply increases electricity demand.
Goldman Sachs Research projects that U.S. data center power demand will rise from 31 gigawatts in 2025 to 41 gigawatts in 2026 and 66 gigawatts in 2027. The projected increase would more than double demand within two years and account for an estimated 8.5% of peak summertime electricity use.
Gartner forecasts that global data center electricity consumption will grow 26% in 2026, reaching 565 terawatt-hours.
Data centers accounted for approximately 4.4% of all U.S. electricity consumption in 2023, according to the Department of Energy and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Their share is expected to reach between 6.7% and 12% by 2028.
“A single warehouse can use as much electricity as a large U.S. city,” Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard University, told ABC News.
Much of the existing electric grid was developed to accommodate relatively gradual growth spread across cities, suburbs and industrial areas. AI data centers create a different challenge by concentrating extraordinary demand at individual sites, sometimes requiring nearly as much power as a major metropolitan area.
Utilities are responding with proposals for new power plants, substations and high-voltage transmission corridors. Many of those lines would cross farms, conservation land and residential properties far from the technology campuses they are intended to supply.
One of the most closely watched disputes is taking place in Saukville, Wisconsin, where 83-year-old landscape painter Tom Uttech and his wife, Mary, are opposing a proposed transmission line across their 52-acre property.
The line would provide electricity to Vantage Data Centers’ Lighthouse campus in nearby Port Washington. The development is a Stargate project announced by OpenAI, Oracle and Vantage in October.
The 672-acre campus is expected to be constructed through 2028 and represents an investment of more than $15 billion. Plans call for nearly one gigawatt of AI computing capacity.
Uttech has lived on his property for almost 40 years and placed part of the land under conservation protection. He said the restored prairie has provided inspiration for much of his work, which is held by museums in nine states.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, known as WILL, is representing the couple.
In an October 2025 letter to American Transmission Co., the conservative legal organization argued that the proposed line does not meet the public-use requirements of either the U.S. Constitution or the Wisconsin Constitution because it would not be needed without the privately owned data center.
“The use of eminent domain power must be the absolute last resort,” WILL Deputy Counsel Lucas Vebber wrote.
Uttech said the dispute cannot be resolved simply by offering money for the property.
“This land is our home, and my wife and I have spent decades cultivating and caring for its natural beauty,” he said. “My wife and I do not want to sell and certainly do not want this land stolen from us just to benefit a privately owned data center.”
WILL has urged the utility and state regulators to examine less disruptive routes and determine whether some or all of the campus’s electricity could be generated on-site before private land is condemned.
American Transmission Co. has submitted a $1.4 billion transmission proposal to the Wisconsin Public Service Commission. The application includes a preferred route and an alternative route that follows a greater number of existing utility corridors.
The impact would extend well beyond the Uttech property. Dairy farms, apple orchards and organic farms are located along the proposed corridor, and dozens of property owners have organized against the plan.
State Rep. Robert Brooks, a Republican, and state Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin, a Democrat, have urged regulators to select the alternative route.
The commission has not issued a final decision. Any route approval could be challenged in court.
Wisconsin courts have previously considered disputes involving American Transmission Co.’s condemnation practices.
In Savage v. American Transmission Co., the Wisconsin Court of Appeals sided with a landowner in a dispute over compensation after the utility expanded an existing easement. The ruling restored the owner’s ability to present expert valuation evidence and obtain a jury determination of just compensation.
That case did not decide whether data center infrastructure constitutes a public use, but it demonstrated that landowners may successfully challenge the procedures and compensation calculations surrounding transmission condemnations.
A broader expansion is underway in Georgia, where the state Public Service Commission approved Georgia Power’s 2025 Integrated Resource Plan.
The plan allows the utility to pursue between 6,000 and 8,500 megawatts of new generation capacity through 2031, along with more than 1,000 miles of additional high-voltage transmission lines.
Regulators later approved another agreement authorizing nearly 10,000 additional megawatts, much of it intended to meet demand from large customers, including data centers.
Among the major projects is the Ashley Park-Wansley transmission line, a roughly 35-mile, 500-kilovolt corridor planned through Coweta and Fayette counties.
Reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Georgia Public Broadcasting indicated that the route could affect at least 330 properties. Between 20 and 30 homes could be demolished.
Georgia Power has said it uses eminent domain only when voluntary purchases cannot be completed and that condemnation represents less than 1% of its land acquisitions.
The utility also maintains that the new line will strengthen the overall electric grid rather than exclusively benefit a single private customer.
Some affected residents remain unconvinced.
Ansley Brown, whose family home lies along the planned route, told 11Alive that Georgia Power offered considerably more than the property’s market value but did so under the threat that condemnation would follow if the offer were rejected.
Attorney David Needham, who represents landowners along the corridor, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he has observed a noticeable increase in eminent domain cases involving transmission development.
State Sen. Greg Dolezal, a Republican running for lieutenant governor, called the use of eminent domain for data center infrastructure “absurd” after visiting one of the affected families.
State Sen. Brian Chavez, a Marietta Republican, described the issue as “a very hot topic.”
Chavez said he considers data centers a public necessity but stopped short of describing them as an outright public good, reflecting the unresolved distinction at the center of the debate.
Georgia regulators have attempted to structure approvals so that existing customers are not required to bear the full cost of infrastructure serving new AI facilities.
Critics argue that those protections may be insufficient.
“Today, commissioners chose to put this $60 billion risk on the backs of everyday Georgians, not Georgia Power,” Southern Environmental Law Center attorney Bob Sherrier said after regulators approved the expansion.
Ohio lawmakers are considering a separate proposal that could change when utilities take possession of condemned property.
The Ohio Business Roundtable has recommended a “deposit and build” system modeled on procedures used in approximately 45 other states.
Under the proposal, an energy company could take possession of land and begin construction after a court determined that a project was necessary and served a public use, even if the amount of compensation remained disputed.
Supporters say the framework would prevent prolonged valuation disagreements from delaying essential energy projects.
Farm organizations contend that it would weaken landowner protections by allowing construction to begin before owners receive final payment or complete the judicial process.
Ohio Farm Bureau official Evan Callicoat warned that the proposal could accelerate data-center-related projects while property owners were still contesting compensation.
Business groups have argued that judicial review of public use and necessity would occur before possession, preserving essential constitutional protections.
The disagreement nevertheless illustrates how the AI power boom is affecting not only the definition of public use but also the procedures governing when land may be occupied and developed.
Many of the current arguments are shaped by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 decision in Kelo v. City of New London.
The court ruled that economic development may qualify as a public use even when condemned land is ultimately transferred from one private owner to another private party.
The decision generated widespread public opposition and prompted more than 40 states to strengthen statutory or constitutional protections against takings that primarily benefit private development.
Those state reforms now provide part of the legal framework through which AI-related transmission projects may be challenged.
Utilities maintain that electricity infrastructure differs from the private redevelopment project considered in Kelo because transmission systems become part of a regulated network serving the public.
Landowners respond that a project should not automatically qualify as public merely because a utility owns or operates the line, particularly when the project’s scale, location and timing are driven overwhelmingly by a private data center.
Similar disputes are appearing elsewhere.
In Texas, data center developers have filed federal lawsuits challenging local construction moratoriums.
Environmental litigation in Minnesota has delayed transmission development by seeking more extensive environmental reviews.
NextEra is pursuing eminent domain authority in Pennsylvania for a 107-mile transmission line intended to support northern Virginia’s large data center market.
Farmers in Maryland are fighting another transmission proposal they say would primarily serve server farms outside the state.
Those cases may be resolved through environmental law, zoning rules, permitting requirements or condemnation procedures without producing a definitive appellate ruling on the public-use question.
Procedural litigation can still delay construction, force route changes or raise costs enough to alter whether a project proceeds.
Utilities and data center developers say condemnation is used only after negotiations fail. They also emphasize that many hyperscale customers have agreed to pay for dedicated generation and grid upgrades rather than transferring those costs to residential and small-business ratepayers.
Vantage has said OpenAI, Oracle and Vantage will finance the energy infrastructure required for the Wisconsin campus while working toward zero-emission power sources.
Opponents say direct financing by the companies reinforces their argument that the infrastructure is primarily private, even when it later becomes part of a utility’s broader system.
For individual families, the legal and economic debate produces immediate consequences.
A transmission easement can permanently divide farmland, restrict future construction, place large towers near homes and affect the value or use of property that may have remained in the same family for generations.
Owners may spend years negotiating or litigating over routes, necessity and compensation while facing uncertainty about whether their land or homes will ultimately be taken.
The Uttechs maintain that the portion of their property threatened by the Wisconsin proposal has value that cannot be fully captured through an appraisal.
Their restored prairie is both protected land and a source of artistic inspiration developed over decades.
No appellate court has yet squarely ruled on whether a transmission line constructed primarily to serve one or several private AI data centers satisfies the constitutional public-use requirement merely because it also provides broader grid benefits.
Most current disputes remain before utility commissions, trial courts or lawmakers.
Wisconsin regulators have not chosen a final route for the Port Washington project. Georgia Power’s acquisitions will proceed under state procedures in which courts first examine necessity before addressing compensation.
As data center electricity consumption rises, the distinction between public infrastructure and private commercial benefit will become increasingly difficult for regulators and courts to avoid.
The outcome will determine not only where AI campuses can be built and how quickly they can connect to the grid, but also how much private property may be taken to support the rapidly expanding industry.
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