Georgia Power's 1,000-Mile Land Grab: Eminent Domain in the AI Era

I have been watching infrastructure fights for the better part of a decade. Data center opposition, transmission line battles, the slow friction between progress and property rights. None of it prepared me for what is unfolding in Georgia right now.

Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, is rolling out a grid expansion plan that includes more than 1,000 miles of new transmission lines spanning over 330 parcels of land. Nearly 30 residential properties are slated for demolition. And the stated justification — the one the utility is willing to put on the record — is that roughly 80 percent of the new capacity will serve data centers.

Not hospitals. Not schools. Not your home. AI data centers.

What Georgia Power Is Actually Building

The most immediate flashpoint is the Ashley Park-Wansley Transmission Project, a 35-mile high-voltage line cutting through Fayette, Heard, Fulton, and Coweta Counties southwest of Atlanta. The route connects Georgia Power's Ashley Park Substation to its Plant Wansley facility, crossing decades-old residential neighborhoods along the way. The Georgia Public Service Commission approved the utility's 2025 Integrated Resource Plan last December, green-lighting roughly 10 gigawatts of new generating capacity over five years.

This is not speculative infrastructure. The PSC's own December 2025 agreement certifies that "approximately 80 percent of which is expected to power data centers." The utility's own filing is explicit about where this juice is going.

But Georgia Power's public-facing position is more careful. "We are not in the data center business," a spokesperson told Fortune this week. When pressed on CBS reports that 70 to 80 percent of the Ashley Park-Wansley line's capacity serves AI data centers, the utility was "unable to confirm the accuracy of these reports."

That tension — between what the PSC filing says and what the PR office will confirm — is the entire story in miniature.

The Human Cost: 30 Homes, 330 Parcels, One Family's Fight

Ansley Brown's childhood home is one of those properties. She took to Instagram with a direct and devastating message: "My childhood home is being taken by Georgia Power. They are going to bulldoze this entire property to the ground." In another video, she said: "We don't have a choice in this. They are going to be expanding power lines. Why? For the data centers."

Her family purchased the home in 2003 through a USDA rural development loan for single mothers. Georgia Power says negotiations with Brown's family have since concluded — the specific terms were not disclosed — and Congressman Brian Jack's office brokered a meeting between the family and the utility. A spokesperson called it "a successful resolution."

But for the roughly 30 other families still in the path of the Ashley Park-Wansley line, resolution has not arrived. Georgia Power says it starts negotiations at 125 percent of appraised value. Meredith Stone, the utility's Media Relations Manager, told Fortune: "It will take as long as it takes for the landowner to feel comfortable with the transaction."

If negotiations fail, the company can pursue eminent domain. Georgia Power says it uses this power in less than one percent of its land transactions and has only done so five times in the past year, none involving residential homes. But for families like Brown's, the threat of condemnation hangs over every negotiation.

The Public Use Question Nobody Is Answering

Eminent domain exists because some infrastructure — roads, rail lines, water systems, transmission corridors — cannot be built parcel by parcel through ordinary bargaining. One holdout landowner can block a project that serves a broader public need. That is the clean version of the law, grounded in the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause.

But here is the question that nobody at Georgia Power or the PSC has directly answered: When 80 percent of a transmission line's capacity serves private data center campuses built by the world's most valuable companies, does that line still serve a "public use"?

David Needham, a Georgia attorney who has spent more than a decade representing property owners in eminent domain cases, put it bluntly: "It blurs the lines between a public good." Needham notes that permanent utility easements function like contracts that remain attached to the property even after it is sold, and can include broad rights for utilities to install additional infrastructure. "It's a contract that's very much tilted in favor of the power company," he said.

This question is not unique to Georgia. The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty has warned the American Transmission Company that a proposed power line serving the Port Washington data center campus would not satisfy state or federal public-use requirements. In Ohio, the Farm Bureau is fighting to prevent the expansion of eminent domain for data center infrastructure, arguing that private hyperscalers do not meet the "public use" threshold. The battle is spreading.

The Fiscal Reality: Half a Billion in Lost Revenue

Georgia has become a hub for AI investment thanks to generous tax incentives. The state's data center sales and use tax exemption, dating back to 2018, waives 100 percent of state and local sales taxes on equipment purchases for facilities making a minimum $100 million to $250 million investment. More than 200 data centers are now operational in the state, with roughly 170 in the Atlanta area alone.

But a December 2025 analysis from the University of Georgia's Carl Vinson Institute of Government projected that the net fiscal impact of this exemption would leave the state roughly $574 million in the negative. Not break-even. Negative by more than half a billion dollars.

J. Thomas Perdue, a policy analyst at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, told Fortune: "State and local governments bear the immediate cost through revenue they do not collect. Whether that cost is ultimately felt through other taxes or reduced public spending depends on subsequent budget decisions."

The tax break math, combined with the eminent domain fights, paints a picture that is hard to square with the argument that data center infrastructure is an unambiguous public good.

What This Means: The System Is Working Exactly as Designed

This is not a failure of process. Georgia Power is following the legal framework that exists: get PSC approval, negotiate with landowners, use eminent domain as a last resort. The system is working exactly as designed.

The problem is that the design is 50 years old and nobody updated it for hyperscale AI infrastructure.

When a transmission line primarily exists because three or four data center campuses need 10 gigawatts of power, and the residents whose homes are taken see their electricity rates potentially go up (not down, despite Georgia Power's projections of $102 per year in savings by 2029), the "public use" justification becomes a legal fiction held together by a PSC filing from last December.

Georgia lawmakers have already started shifting. The legislature voted to suspend new data center tax exemptions in 2024 — Governor Kemp vetoed it, but the fact that the vote happened at all signals a change in political winds. Several Georgia municipalities have enacted local moratoriums on new data center facilities. The state is feeling the whiplash between the AI investment boom and its real-world costs.

What Comes Next

Georgia Power says the Ashley Park-Wansley project is slated to begin construction as early as next year. Land acquisition and easement negotiations are described as "close" to completion. That means the clock is running for the families still in the line's path.

The broader question — whether eminent domain can lawfully serve private hyperscalers at this scale — will be decided in courtrooms across multiple states. Wisconsin is already litigating it. Ohio is gearing up. Georgia's turn is coming.

If you own property in the path of a proposed transmission line, understand that a permanent utility easement is not a one-time transaction. It is a contract that attaches to your deed and follows every future sale. Get independent legal representation before you sign anything. The utility's starting offer of 125 percent of appraised value is exactly that — a starting point, not a final number.

As for the broader picture: the data center buildout is not slowing down. But the political and legal resistance to it is accelerating faster than most people realize. The $7 trillion question — and it is now literally a $7 trillion question, per McKinsey's projection through 2030 — is whether the grid can expand fast enough to meet AI demand without breaking the legal and social contracts that make eminent domain acceptable in the first place.

Right now, the answer is not looking good for either side.

— Allan Ali, Sylt.ing