Georgia Power Is Seizing Homes for Data Center Power Lines — and Residents Never Had a Chance

A 27-year-old woman named Ansley Brown posted a TikTok video about what was happening to her childhood home. It got 6 million views. That’s how badly people recognize what’s going on in Georgia — because almost no one is being told about it through official channels.

Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company, is executing a $16 billion grid expansion plan. Company representatives have acknowledged that approximately 80% of the new power capacity will flow to data centers. To deliver it, they need hundreds of miles of new high-voltage transmission lines. And those lines are going straight through people’s homes.

Project Wansley: 35 Miles, 330 Properties, 20–30 Demolitions

Project Wansley is a new 35-mile, 500-kilovolt transmission corridor cutting through Coweta and Fayette counties in Georgia to serve at least four AI-driven data centers. In its path:

• 330+ properties affected by seizure or easement
• 20 to 30 homes slated for outright demolition
• Hundreds of other landowners forced to accept permanent easements placing 500-kV towers within feet of their bedroom windows

Some studies suggest safe residential distance from lines of this voltage begins at 300 feet. One homeowner, Cynthia Van Epps, was offered an easement that would place the line just 87 feet from her house — with only 12 feet between the structure and the easement boundary. (New York Post, May 21, 2026)

The Negotiations Were Never Negotiations

Residents describe a consistent pattern: Georgia Power sends appraisers who use comparable sales from areas far outside the immediate market to establish artificially low baseline values. Lowball offers follow. When homeowners push back, lawyers get involved.

Brown’s mother purchased her Coweta County home in 2003 through a USDA federal loan program for single mothers — a program that required the property to be in a rural area. Georgia Power’s offer came in an estimated $70,000 to $100,000 below market value. When she said she was done negotiating, a letter arrived — not from the utility, but from its lawyers — warning the family that if they didn’t settle, the company would pursue condemnation through a third party.

Van Epps, who has owned her five-bedroom home for 17 years, was offered $125,000 for an easement that would consume more than half her property. She calculates that she will pay an estimated $300,000 in property taxes over the next 30 years on land she cannot use, build on, or sell — while Georgia Power runs billions of dollars worth of electricity across those same lines for data center clients.

"Can you imagine that?" she said. "You’re paying property taxes for the very power lines that they’re making billions of dollars off of."

Eminent Domain in Service of Private Corporations

Eminent domain was designed as a tool for public benefit — roads, schools, public utilities. What is happening in Georgia is something different: a private utility, serving private data center corporations, using government-backed seizure powers to take homes from individual families.

Georgia Power’s $16 billion expansion plan is explicitly driven by data center demand. The company has acknowledged that roughly 80% of its new generating capacity will serve them. The residents of Coweta and Fayette counties did not vote for this. They were not consulted. They were sent appraisers and then lawyers.

The Resistance

Brown’s TikTok video drew more than 6 million views and caught the attention of state legislators. Residents have organized, hired attorneys, and pushed back on appraisals. Some have managed to delay or modify the terms. But the corridor is still being built. The data centers are still being served.

This is the hidden cost of the AI boom — not just water and electricity, but homes. Real ones, with histories, with families who bought them on federal rural lending programs, with backyards where children grew up.

The cloud is not invisible. It runs through Cynthia Van Epps’s backyard — 87 feet from her house, whether she agreed to it or not.

Source

• New York Post — Residents fume as Georgia Power seizes homes under eminent domain, May 21, 2026