Can companies seize your private property to build data center infrastructure?
According to legal scholar Aaron Walayat at the University of Dayton, it’s certainly a possibility.
In a new piece for The Conversation, Walayat warns that power companies in states like George and Pennsylvania have been considering the use of eminent domain — the government’s prerogative to seize land without its owners’ consent — to build more transmission lines used to power data centers.
If a landowner refuses a power company’s payout, the power company can turn to the local government to seize the land if it’s for “public use,” paying the landowner “just compensation.” These seizures are called condemnations, and most of the time they’re carried out by state and local governments, according to Walayat. In the case of transmission lines, the power company would be able to buy an easement on the landowner’s property.
