Nov. 1, 2025, 6:30 AM EDT
MT. AIRY, Md. — Standing in a 40-acre field of Christmas trees, Lisa Gaver traced the path of the high-voltage power line that could one day cut through the heart of her family’s farm.
The 500-kilovolt line would skim a parking lot, cross through the woods and over a metal deer fence, before running diagonally across a field of Douglas firs and blue spruces and continuing as far as the eye could see.
Gaver, a seventh-generation farmer, wants no part of what she and other landowners in rural Maryland call an “extension cord” for data centers in Northern Virginia 50 miles away. She figures that the tens of thousands of patrons who descend on the 150-acre farm annually to pick pumpkins, find their perfect Christmas tree and munch on apple cider doughnuts don…
Nov. 1, 2025, 6:30 AM EDT
MT. AIRY, Md. — Standing in a 40-acre field of Christmas trees, Lisa Gaver traced the path of the high-voltage power line that could one day cut through the heart of her family’s farm.
The 500-kilovolt line would skim a parking lot, cross through the woods and over a metal deer fence, before running diagonally across a field of Douglas firs and blue spruces and continuing as far as the eye could see.
Gaver, a seventh-generation farmer, wants no part of what she and other landowners in rural Maryland call an “extension cord” for data centers in Northern Virginia 50 miles away. She figures that the tens of thousands of patrons who descend on the 150-acre farm annually to pick pumpkins, find their perfect Christmas tree and munch on apple cider doughnuts don’t either.
“It’s going to financially devastate us,” she said. “There’s $4 million worth of inventory in this field.”
For more than a year, tensions over a plan to construct a 67-mile transmission line across three Maryland counties — Baltimore, Frederick and Carroll — have rocked the state’s farming communities. Landowners have staked signs along the highway declaring, “No eminent domain for corporate gain.” A court battle has escalated into threatening social media posts and heated confrontations between farmers and land surveyors. Local officials from all three counties have opposed the project, and some have pleaded with state and federal officials to intervene.
Lisa Gaver worries future power lines may deter the public from visiting her family’s Christmas tree farm.André Chung for NBC News
“People are scared,” said Steve McKay, a councilman in Frederick County. “It brings people to tears. It makes others angry — the notion that this out-of-state firm is going to come in and potentially be given the authority by eminent domain to take land.”
The $424 million Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project is an effort by PJM Interconnection, which operates all or part of the electric grid for 13 states, including Maryland, to address climbing power demands amid the growth of energy-hungry data centers and an artificial intelligence boom.
“Without these upgrades, Maryland may face severe grid congestion, threatening both affordability and reliability for ratepayers,” the Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG), the New Jersey-based utility company responsible for building the line, said in a statement.
Battles over data centers and the enormous resources they require are riling communities across the country, part of a growing backlash against the infrastructure needs of America’s artificial intelligence industry. Zoning meetings have turned into standing-room-only showdowns. Opponents say data centers harm property values and guzzle power and water while providing few long-term jobs and often benefiting from tax breaks. Local officials in Kentucky, Missouri and Georgia have passed temporary moratoriums on new data centers; in Michigan, a developer recently sued a town for rejecting its request to rezone farmland for a data center.
Farmer Rebecca Stoecker-Dolly, shown with her mother, Weida Stoecker, worries about the loss of agricultural land. She sees farming as a way to honor her late father.André Chung for NBC News
Few fights have grown as heated as the pushback in Maryland, where PSEG has floated using eminent domain to take farmland from residents who won’t agree to host the new transmission line. After farmers organized to keep PSEG’s land surveyors off their property — and some farmers were accused of threatening the surveyors with guns and dogs — the company asked a federal judge to send in U.S. marshals.
The judge did not agree, but the divisive debate in Maryland shows just how critical data centers’ demands have become and the impact they will have on the country’s open spaces. Thousands of acres of agricultural land from North Carolina to Indiana are now earmarked for the facilities. Companies including Meta and Amazon are building sprawling structures onfields that once grew soybeans and corn. While some farmers are opting to sell, others are fighting what they see as an intrusion ultimately benefiting Big Tech.
“I don’t want to be bought out,” said Renée Wilson, a fourth-generation farmer in Parkton, Maryland, who runs The Farmyard, a popular learning farm. The proposed power line would cross her livestock fields, and PSEG sued her to gain access for surveyors; a ruling is pending. “I’m going to fight this tooth and nail as long as I can,” she said.
PSEG’s latest move that rankled opponents came in late October, when the company asked a judge to temporarily block deer hunting on properties it plans to survey, to keep its workers safe.
PJM has argued that Maryland needs the project not just to support companies across state lines in Virginia — where a “Data Center Alley” hosts roughly 200 of the facilities for major tech firms — but also to feed data centers within Maryland’s borders and to shore up the state’s grid. Maryland imports 40% of the electricity it uses, and the existing lines are expected to be so overburdened that the state could see brownouts as soon as 2027, PSEG said.
Asked about farmers’ concerns, PSEG said it would “work proactively to limit any impacts.” The company added, “Our experience has been that agriculture and agritourism can coexist with transmission lines.”
Power lines are already adjacent to Brandon Hill’s driveway in Parkland, Md. He expects new transmission towers on his farm if the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project is built.André Chung for NBC News
Farmers caught in limbo
The state’s Public Service Commission isn’t expected to decide on the project until 2027, which means residents are facing years of uncertainty.
Melvin Baile, a farmer in Carroll County expects the transmission line to hover over the cornfields he leases. He worries it would interfere with the drones and helicopters farmers use to spray crops to fight destructive fungi, like tar spot.
“We literally are fighting the unknown here,” he said. “It’s really scary.”
Baile doesn’t know how he would farm if he can’t spray, so he’s joined other farmers, including Gaver, in a case before the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals challenging the rights of surveyors to come onto their property to examine the line’s potential path.
The resistance has been brewing for months.
In April, PSEG began suing property owners who barred crews from their land and a federal judge ruled surveyors had to be granted access. By August, the company said that some crews were facing threats.
Leslie Alfred White was one of the landowners the company accused.
Leslie Alfred White, who opposes the project, is one of several landowners sued by PSEG for refusing access to survey crews.André Chung for NBC News
White had sent a letter to the home of a worker denying PSEG access to his 10-acre farm and offering what he described as a warning about the area: “In many communities in Northern Baltimore and Carroll Counties, there is a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ attitude,” he wrote.
White said the letter wasn’t intended as a threat, and he ultimately agreed to follow a court order allowing PSEG on his property, where workers pick kale and collards by hand. But when the surveyors arrived in July, White wasn’t home and they found a sign near the driveway** **emblazoned with a picture of a gun, reading: “Prayer is the best way to meet the Lord / Trespassing is Faster.”
PSEG later said in court that Weida Stoecker, one of White’s tenant farmers, threatened the surveyors with dogs; Stoecker denied that, saying she simply wanted to ensure the dogs didn’t bother the surveyors. The surveyors left. In a court filing requesting protection from the U.S. Marshals Service, PSEG said one of the workers feared for her safety.
White told NBC News he didn’t give his tenants permission to display the sign, and he was shocked by PSEG’s request for protection.
“I think they might have been trying to turn a molehill into a mountain,” he said.
A federal judge denied PSEG’s request, writing that the “circumstances — at least at present — do not warrant sending U.S. Marshals to accompany PSEG and its agents.”
Fourth-generation farmer Charles Stoecker harvests kale on land his family rents from Leslie Alfred White.André Chung for NBC News
‘American dream’ at risk
The farmers have also appealed to higher authorities, including Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, who has expressed “grave concerns” about the power line but has not acted to stop it, and President Donald Trump, who has pledged “global dominance” in AI.
Carroll County Commissioner Kenneth Kiler, part of a local delegation that recently sent a letter to Trump, hopes the president will listen to a community that swung strongly in his favor in 2024.
“Life’s life and we may not like the final answer, but we would like some communication,” Kiler said.
Moore’s office didn’t comment. Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, blamed Maryland’s electricity issues on the closure of coal plants and said Trump supports efforts to “meet the growing energy demand and win the AI arms race.” The White House said it would be better to meet that demand by building more power plants rather than new transmission lines.
For Brandon Hill, the power line is an unwelcome obstacle to his plans for the farmland he purchased in Baltimore County three years ago. Hill and his wife, Marie, envision a 60-acre “food forest” growing walnuts, berries and chestnuts.
“That was our American dream and we were building it,” Hill, 31, said.
Brandon Hill holds hybrid American chestnuts harvested on his farm.André Chung for NBC News
He has paused on planting prairie grasses and wildflowers on half the property while he waits to see exactly where the new line will go and what is allowed to grow beneath it. In the meantime he is volunteering with the Tri-County Coalition, composed of farming and environmental advocacy groups that oppose the power line.
Like White, Hill was also named in PSEG’s motion seeking protection for surveyors. The surveyors visited on a day Hill was away from home, and PSEG said his father called a Black security agent a racial slur, threatened to shoot the crew in the head and nearly hit a worker with an ATV.
In court documents, Hill’s lawyer said Hill apologized after learning of his father’s alleged actions and that his father had a mental health condition. Hill’s lawyer told the court that Hill’s father won’t be there when surveyors return.
For now, Hill is guiding fellow landowners in how to have a say as the lengthy approvals process unfolds. State regulators will begin holding hearings next year.
Questions about the future
Back in Mt. Airy, a “stop the power lines” sign greets patrons at Gaver’s Christmas tree farm. She and her husband were newlyweds when they began selling trees in the 1980s.
When they added a corn maze in the late 2000s, social media was still novel. Now, visitors pose with props like antique trucks, and families use the trees as backdrops for Instagram posts and Christmas cards.
Gaver said the proposed power lines would run above the tree line along the length of the property and would be visible from any point on the farm. André Chung for NBC News
“Twenty years ago, if you would have told me our farming would have changed to selling photos,” Gaver mused on a recent Thursday.
She tried to imagine a transmission tower looming over the hayride drop off, just paces away from a trailer repurposed as a cider stand. She wondered: Would anyone want to pick apples under a transmission line? What if her deer fence picked up the current? Would her insurance company consider the line a hazard and charge more than she could afford?
Lisa Gaver has written to Maryland’s governor and joined a legal battle over the line.André Chung for NBC News
“It’s hard to say, ‘I worked and built this up for 43 years and someone’s just going to walk in and destroy it as a land grab for out-of-state corporations,’” Gaver said. “It’s devastating.”
For now, she was reminding her daughter to order more cases of “apple sippers” — apple-shaped kids’ cups that she sells filled with cider. The skies were blue as families snapped their pictures.
The surveyors arrived the next week.
Bracey Harris is a national reporter for NBC News, based in Jackson, Mississippi.