The data center boom is transforming Georgia. Some residents could lose their land.
Rachael Maszk and her husband ditched their Buckhead apartment four years ago seeking more space to garden, keep chickens and raise a family.
They found what they were looking for in unincorporated Fayette County, 25 miles southwest of Atlanta. Their new home sits on 2 acres and has the seclusion Maszk craved for her young children.
Then, last fall, the couple got a letter from Georgia Power.
It said new, high-voltage transmission lines the company plans to build may need to cross their property, and invited them to a community meeting to learn more. In March, Georgia Power revealed its intentions: to acquire about a third of their land through an easement to accommodate the power lines.
If they accept the utility’s compensation offer, Maszk said the forested area off their back porch — the reason they bought the home — would be gone, replaced by transmission towers and lines.
The past several weeks have been a “stressful” tug of war, with offers and counteroffers. But Maszk is not alone.
Demand for power is on the rise again in Georgia, mainly because of the state’s recruitment of data centers. And while Georgia Power is building new power plants to generate electricity, it also needs new power lines to deliver it.
That new transmission infrastructure is creating conflict with homeowners — and raising fears the utility may use eminent domain to force sales if residents reject the offers.
Eminent domain is when a government or utility forces a private property owner to sell some, or all, of their land for a specific project. The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects against abuse of eminent domain, and Georgia law requires projects serve a “public use.”
Georgia Power spokesman Jacob Hawkins said it uses eminent domain as a “last resort” in less than 1% of its land transactions. In most, he said “we are able to reach agreements with property owners that fairly compensate them for their property and inconvenience — oftentimes, prices that are well above market value or with additional terms that benefit the homeowner.”
Metro Atlanta has emerged as a top U.S. market for data centers, but that boom has created tensions, with server farms emerging as a potent political issue on both sides of the aisle. The controversy involving easements and fears of eminent domain has caught the attention of several prominent conservative politicians and commentators on social media this week.
Data Surge: An AJC series
Data center development is surging in Georgia with metro Atlanta becoming the fastest growing market for server farms in the U.S. and one of the top locations in the world. But the data center boom has raised many questions about land use, the resources the complexes consume and the risk of costs being spread to other Georgia residents and businesses. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Data Surge” takes an in-depth look into the power and water demands of data centers and the deliberations of policymakers about this rising industry.
Part 1: Why mall-sized data centers are popping up across Georgia
Part 2: Data centers become new flashpoint for local controversy in Georgia
Part 3: Data Center Alley has lessons to teach. Is metro Atlanta listening?
Part 4: As data centers flock to Georgia, state lawmakers haven’t pumped the brakes
Part 5: Data centers’ thirst for power and water places Georgia on edge
Part 6: Why Big Tech sees Georgia farmland as ripe for data centers
Part 7: What data center companies are spending for Georgia land might shock you
Part 8: Data centers promise tax gains for Georgia. But are they delivering?
Part 9: Georgia’s sales tax breaks for data centers tally more than $2.5 billion
Part 10: Metro Atlanta cities question how many data centers are too many
Part 11: Atlanta banned data centers in most of the city. One is trying anyway.
A TikTok video posted by a woman in Coweta County claimed her childhood home was being “forcibly taken” by Georgia Power to make way for transmission lines. By Thursday morning, it had more than 3.7 million views, plus countless more on other platforms.
John Rich, a member of the country music duo Big & Rich and a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, posted several times on X about the issue, demanding action from state politicians and Georgia Power executives.
Georgia Republican Greg Dolezal, a state senator from Cumming who’s running for lieutenant governor, even visited the woman from the viral video. On Facebook, he said “Eminent domain for data centers is absurd,” and called the young woman “heroic.”
Hawkins, the Georgia Power spokesman, said the company was working to finalize an agreement with the woman in the video. He added Georgia Power understands residents may have questions or concerns about the projects, but said the utility works to “minimize the impact of construction on our communities.”
The highways of the power grid
If the overhead wires zigzagging from utility poles to homes are the quiet surface streets of the power grid, high-voltage lines are the 12-lane freeways, transporting huge amounts of electricity over long distances.
The new ones creating a stir are the Ashley Park-Wansley lines, a 500-kilovolt transmission project that’s set to travel 35 miles from a substation near Newnan, south of Atlanta, to Georgia Power’s Plant Wansley.
Wansley, about 60 miles southwest of Atlanta, is a former coal plant being revived by Georgia Power with two new gas-burning turbines and a massive battery energy storage system. Plant Yates, another retired coal station-turned-gas-fired plant is also near the new power lines. Georgia Power is in the process of building three more gas units at Plant Yates.
The corridor around the new transmission lines is also flush with large data center projects.
The two most prominent ones along the path are the QTS campus in Fayette County and “Project Sail” by Prologis in Coweta County, both of which rank among the largest in Georgia.
Hawkins, the Georgia Power spokesman, said the new transmission lines are “not to serve any single customer.” Rather, he said, they might supply power to data centers, manufacturing plants and new residences in the area, while boosting “overall reliability and resiliency.”
Georgia Power confirmed it is providing electricity to QTS, but Hawkins said it is not currently under contract to power Project Sail.
In April, Coweta County leaders voted 3-2 to rezone roughly 800 acres for Project Sail’s campus, prompting a lawsuit by nearly 20 residents aiming to reverse that decision. The county’s board of commissioners declined to comment on pending litigation.
QTS, a subsidiary of private equity giant Blackstone, is building its second data center on a 615-acre campus in Fayetteville, roughly 30 miles southwest of downtown Atlanta. Its first building opened in October and is leased to Microsoft as part of its artificial intelligence “superfactory” effort called Fairwater.
The larger QTS project, along Ga. 54 in Fayetteville, is envisioned to include up to 7 million square feet of data centers, the floor space of more than four Lenox Square malls. QTS did not respond to requests for comment on the eminent domain discussions.
Microsoft last week confirmed it is also developing a nearby project in Fayette County called “Project Rita,” which is near Tyrone. The 147-acre project is poised to include two data centers and an on-site substation.
On the eminent domain discussions, Fayette spokesperson Cintia Listenbee said Georgia Power’s “use of eminent domain is granted under Georgia law.”
Niki Vanderslice, head of the Fayette County Development Authority, which provided a tax break to QTS’ project, declined to comment. In a July interview, Vanderslice told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that QTS selected a different utility provider than the county anticipated when advertising the site for development, which required construction of additional power infrastructure. She said that has its own silver linings.
“With that additional infrastructure, we are going to be the most hardened community from a power outage standpoint,” she said. “ … So everybody will benefit from the upgraded infrastructure.”
A data center mecca
Metro Atlanta has emerged as a hotbed of data center development after the artificial intelligence boom, establishing itself as the second-largest market for computer storage space.
The region set records last year for the amount of space under construction, and it’s the only major market with more computer storage space proposed than currently operational.
Data center projects have especially targeted Atlanta’s Southside communities, with a wave across Coweta, Fayette, Henry and south Fulton counties. Many of those areas have issued moratoriums to rewrite their zoning codes amid the torrent of proposals.
Data centers and fears about their land, water and power needs cut across the political divide.
According to a new AJC poll, nearly 53% of Republican primary respondents said they would somewhat or strongly disapprove of a data center being built in their community. Disapproval tallied more than 75% for Democratic respondents.
New transmission lines are an ancillary, but impactful, downstream effect of data center projects.
The installation of overhead power lines for QTS’ Fayetteville campus sparked a protest from neighbors, which was documented by Bloomberg in 2024. New power lines for a different QTS campus in Atlanta’s Howell Station neighborhood also ruffled feathers last year by reducing a tree buffer between homes and the Fulton County Jail.
Prologis said Project Sail’s proximity to Plant Yates limits the amount of new power infrastructure that’s needed, mitigating those conflicts.
“Project Sail was intentionally sited next to existing power infrastructure so energy can be delivered efficiently without the need for new transmission lines to be built across Coweta County,” a company spokesperson said. “We are not involved with Georgia Power’s separate transmission line project in the area.”
Coweta has another approved data center pitch along Georgia Power’s transmission project path. Called Project Peach, the $1 billion proposal near the city of Palmetto faced stark opposition, including from the city’s mayor, but was given a 3-2 green light by Coweta leaders.
‘I don’t think it’s right’
It’s likely property rights disputes stemming from the rush to expand the grid are only just beginning.
Georgia Power’s 10-year transmission plan, approved last year by the Public Service Commission, includes a road map for building as much as 1,000 miles of new power lines across the state.
David Needham, an attorney with the Georgia Eminent Domain Law Firm that represents clients in the path of the Ashley Park-Wansley lines, said he’s “absolutely” seen an uptick in land transactions near transmission projects.
“I would anticipate more of it in the future,” he said.
In the meantime, property owners whose homes have been affected are trying to figure out their next move.
Maszk, the Fayette County mother on whose land Georgia Power is seeking an easement, said she no longer feels safe raising her children in their home. She and her husband are in active negotiations with Georgia Power, and are seeking to have the utility buy the whole property.
Over the past few weeks, Maszk estimates she’s spent at least two hours a day emailing and making calls to try to resolve the issue.
“I have little kids, and this is not really how I want to spend my time,” she said.
But, she added later, “I don’t think it’s right. And if no one does anything, then nothing changes.”
About the Authors
Drew Kann is a reporter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution covering climate change and environmental issues. His passion is for stories that capture how humans are responding to a changing environment. He is a proud graduate of the University of Georgia and Northwestern University, and prior to joining the AJC, he held various roles at CNN.
Zachary Hansen, a Georgia native, covers economic development and commercial real estate for the AJC. He's been with the newspaper since 2018 and enjoys diving into complex stories that affect people's lives.
