SAUKVILLE, Wisconsin — David Aversa spent months watching debate simmer in nearby Port Washington over a proposed $15 billion data center on 672 acres not far from Lake Michigan — one of the Stargate projects backed by technology giants OpenAI and Oracle.
Aversa didn’t much like the idea. But the controversy was in the next town over, a 15-minute drive from his home nestled among hundreds of pines and spruce trees.
That changed last summer when a neighbor delivered news: The “preferred” route for a $1.4 billion high-voltage transmission line needed to supply power to the data center would slice a 250-foot-wide path through his 70-acre property.
Aversa is just one of a chorus of other landowners, dairy farms, conservationists and local governments challenging American Transmission Co.’s (ATC) application for approval of the line and more specifically the utility’s choice of routes through the countryside of southeastern Wisconsin. It’s a movement that’s recently grown to include the project’s lead developer, Vantage Data Centers, which publicly advocated for ATC to opt for an alternate route about 10 miles farther east.
“We all want the same thing,” Aversa said as he walked among the trees on his property. “That is to push this onto existing corridors and don’t ruin our rural neighborhood.”
So far, ATC hasn’t made any changes.
In many ways, the controversy is not unlike hundreds of energy infrastructure battles across the country where landowners resist pipelines and power lines that will run above or beneath their farms, ranches and fields. For almost as long as there’s been eminent domain — the government “taking” of private property for public use — parties have disputed and litigated over if and under what circumstances it’s appropriate.
The rapid scale-up of data centers for artificial intelligence and their city-sized appetites for electricity is re-upping debate, at least from the point of view of landowners in the path of new high-voltage power lines being proposed.
While energy infrastructure is commonly granted use of eminent domain because it provides a public use, Aversa and others lining up against the Ozaukee County Distribution Interconnection Project argue that ATC shouldn’t be given permission to take land for a project being driven by the needs of a single user, especially multibillion-dollar companies.
Alexandra Klass, a law professor at University of Michigan who worked at the Department of Energy during the Biden administration, said the development of transmission driven by large data centers could be a legal gray area.
“Saying this is for a single, private customer is a little risky in terms of whether it’s a public use,” Klass said.
On the other hand, utilities “have the duty to make sure that they have enough generation and transmission to meet all the needs of the public,” she said. Whether it’s a new subdivision, a manufacturer or a large data center, utilities have an obligation to provide service to customers.
Data centers like the one in Port Washington can have electricity needs that pose a paradigm shift for utilities and regulators that have historically focused on gradually adding new infrastructure to serve slower, more gradual demand growth.
The Lighthouse data center, a nod to the nautical history of Port Washington, a city of 13,000 that hugs the Lake Michigan shoreline, was publicly announced in October.
Without naming the project, which would require 1.3 gigawatts of capacity, ATC noted that new power line was needed because without the upgrade the data center would “overwhelm the existing transmission facilities.”
‘This is built for everybody’
Developers of the Lighthouse data center are on an aggressive schedule. They’ve told utility We Energies and ATC that they want electricity by the end of 2027.
Wisconsin-based ATC, the transmission-only utility building the line to meet the Lighthouse project’s ambitious timeline, rejects contentions that the power line would amount to “a giant extension cord” for the sole benefit of a single user.
Ellen Nowak, ATC’s vice president of regulatory and government affairs and a former Wisconsin utility regulator, said grid-tied power lines like the one proposed aren’t intended to serve a single customer. There will inevitably be more demand growth. Other energy users could interconnect to the line at points along the route.
Nowak likewise dismissed any suggestion that eminent domain can’t be used. “That’s just a lack of understanding of how the system works,” she said. “This is built for everybody.”
Bob McKee, ATC’s director of interconnection solutions, acknowledges the scale of new data center demand is unprecedented for the state. But he said the transmission planning process doesn’t change as a result. McKee said the company isn’t cutting any corners or making special provisions. It follows the same “open, transparent processes” with landowners, regulators and the regional grid operator and to ensure there’s adequate transmission capacity available for any new customer, regardless of type or size, he said.
“We are interconnecting those loads just like we we’ve interconnected loads for years,” he said in an interview.
The pushback in Wisconsin isn’t unique. Across the country, just as communities are fighting data center proposals, some rural landowners believe taking land for power lines to supply energy to giant AI companies is unjust.
Oregon’s Public Utilities Commission was recently asked by project opponents to rescind a permit issued in 2023 for the 300-mile Boardman-to-Hemingway power line from Idaho to Oregon after one of the utility partners in the project, PacifiCorp, suggested in a regulatory filing that it would use its share of capacity to serve a single user, a customer believed to be a data center.
The Oregon PUC, however, denied the petition to rescind the permit, finding the project still important to the state.
In Maryland, a group of landowners is urging regulators to reject an application by Public Service Enterprise Group for a 67-mile, 500-kilovolt line.
The Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project is among more than $5 billion in transmission upgrades that grid operator PJM Interconnection determined is necessary for reliability in the face of growing electricity demand and a changeover in the region’s generating fleet. Project opponents say the rising demand cited by PJM is clearly tied to data center development in northern Virginia.
PSEG sought approval for the project by March 2026. But the Maryland Public Service Commission said last year that more time is required to study the project. The Maryland PSC established a procedural schedule that goes until at least early 2027.
‘What kind of country have we become?’
In Wisconsin, the line for the Lighthouse project would consist of two segments, totaling about 100 miles, that would run north and south from near Appleton, Wisconsin, to Port Washington.
ATC offered two main routes for the project as required by the Public Service Commission. It designated one as a preferred option based on various siting criteria — a path it said will minimize impacts to homes and businesses, has fewer road and existing power line crossings, and wouldn’t require a new switching station or new facilities at a nearby steel mill.
Vantage Data Centers, the lead developer, didn’t respond to requests for comment. But a company executive stated publicly last month that Vantage spent weeks looking at the issue, talking with ATC and local power supplier We Energies, and personally inspecting each of the transmission line routes put forward.
“We are hopeful the PSC comes to the same conclusion that we have,” Tracye Herrington, vice president of new site development for Vantage, said at a Port Washington City Council meeting.
Though a few miles longer and costing at least $51 million more, the alternate route would utilize more existing right of way and avoid impacts outlined in letters to the PSC.
For instance, the power line would bisect the town of Saukville, Wisconsin, and run near the town’s largest dairy farm, an apple orchard and organic farms. Other landowners have protested concerns about the line’s effect on property values, the environment and visual impacts.
They include Thomas Uttech, a nationally recognized landscape painter, who has intervened in proceedings at the PSC and says the line would “interfere with his art and ability to earn a living in an incalculable way.”
State Rep. Robert Brooks (R), whose district outside Port Washington would be affected by the power line asked the PSC to choose the alternate route as did state Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D), whose district includes the city of Port Washington.
“The preferred route impacts some of the most pristine and rural areas of Ozaukee County and I do not want that area adversely affected by this project,” Brooks said in a letter to state regulators.
Back at his home in Saukville, Aversa said the line threatens to destroy the natural beauty of the land he treasures as a sanctuary for his family.
It’s property that’s home to a spring-fed forested wetland, wildlife including osprey, bald eagles and great blue heron and the threatened Hine’s emerald dragonfly. Then there are the thousands of trees that he planted a decade ago with the help of a state reforestation grant to offset the effect of damage from emerald ash borer infestation.
“How can they come to me and say, ‘We’re going to condemn your property and take it for a private entity?’” he said. “What kind of country have we become?”
