When can a power company take your land for a data center?

[marmar]

When can a power company take your land for a data center?
Published: July 16, 2026 8:19am EDT

Aaron Walayat
Assistant Professor of Law, University of Dayton


(The Conversation) The artificial intelligence boom in the United States is being matched by a data center building boom. There are more than 3,000 data centers in the U.S. and another 1,500 in development, according to a Pew Research Center analysis.

While President Donald Trump has promoted AI advancement, calling it crucial to economic and national security, polling shows that 7 in 10 Americans oppose the construction of AI data centers in their communities, citing higher utility bills, pollution, noise and the loss of green space. These centers, which hold computer servers that process words, images and lines of code for large language models such as ChatGPT, also use high amounts of water and electricity.

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Where private citizens refuse to sell their land, companies are turning to eminent domain, the government’s inherent power to seize private property without a landowner’s consent. But does a line built to serve a private data center qualify?

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What is eminent domain?

Power companies can approach landowners to purchase easements for transmission lines; if landowners refuse, the government might force a sale.

The government may take private land without consent if the seizure is for “public use” and if the landowner is given “just compensation,” according to the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. ...............(more)

https://theconversation.com/when-can-a-power-company-take-your-land-for-a-data-center-284061

[FakeNoose]

1. Eminent domain was used in the 1960s and 70s when the interstate highways were built

We had a large swath of residential neighborhoods wiped out in Pittsburgh when the I-279 interstate was planned to cut right through the northside of the city. Many homeowners sold their properties when asked, but others held out to the very end. The state, county and city governments took the owners to court, condemned their properties and had them evicted. It took over 10 years to accomplish this but nowadays hardly anyone remembers the days before I-279 was built. (It was completed around 1975, I think.)

My point is that data centers aren't the government, they are private enterprises. They aren't going to wait that long, they want it now. If the property owners stick together and refuse to sell, the data centers will go elsewhere. There's no profit in waiting, they believe others will sell to them. They can bribe some officials, but shining a spotlight on their corruption is another avenue.

Don't sell your property to them, and form an agreement with all the local property owners. I believe the environmental groups (Sierra Club and others) will work with those who want to keep out the big data centers.

[Igel]

2. Yes, but those are federal roads taken by the federal government.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/545/469/, a decision I thought wrong-headed from the get-go, said that a development by a private party as part of a government-developed economic plan that would bring public benefit was enough to justify eminent domain, since economic development had long been a government function. (Ignore that many of the inhabitants would have objected, as did many others, that the area was 'blighted' in a way that justified bulldozing it.)

Stevens, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ., joined. Kennedy, J., filed a concurring opinion. O’Connor, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and Scalia and Thomas, JJ., joined. Thomas, J., filed a dissenting opinion.

I could see an argument that as part of a plan to include a data center, with additional power being required for that and for general economic growth (since the grid is 'common' and not particular), a electric power supplier could petition for eminent domain.

This is made easier in states where the utility is publicly owned (i.e., Austin TX) or operates almost as an extension of government because it's so tightly regulated that it has little economic wiggle room (perhaps like my ur-state of MD).