Eminent Domain and Transmission Line Easements: A Landowner’s Guide

An easement is a right to use someone else’s land for a defined purpose. For a transmission line, the utility typically asks for a strip of land (the right-of-way) along a center line, plus rights to reach it. The owner keeps title and pays taxes on the land, but the easement restricts what can happen inside the corridor.¹

The scale is growing with voltage. Valley Link, a partnership of major utilities, has proposed a roughly $1 billion, 765 kV line between the Joshua Falls substation in Campbell County and the Yeat substation in Culpeper County, and in 2026 it released revised routes after landowner objections.⁴ The Virginia Farm Bureau ties this and other proposed high-voltage lines to data center growth.¹ Maryland’s Piedmont Reliability Project is a 500 kV line of about 67 miles through Baltimore, Carroll and Frederick counties.³⁸

A typical transmission easement grants the utility rights to:

• Build, operate, rebuild and maintain towers, wires and related equipment.
• Clear and keep clear trees and vegetation, sometimes including “danger trees” just outside the strip.
• Enter the property and cross it to reach the corridor.
• Keep buildings and other permanent structures out of the right-of-way.

Texas makes the negotiable parts explicit: a private entity condemning a transmission easement must give the owner an addendum describing the terms required in the easement and the terms that can be negotiated.² Our guide to mineral rights and easements covers how existing recorded easements affect a site.

The Fifth Amendment allows private property to be taken for public use only with just compensation. In Kelo v. City of New London (2005), the U.S. Supreme Court read “public use” broadly enough to include economic development, and the reaction led 42 states to change their eminent domain laws.⁹

Who holds the power depends on state law. In Virginia, the Farm Bureau summarizes the rules this way: a utility does not own property just because a project is approved; it must obtain a voluntary easement or use a separate legal process; it must give notice before approval, before condemnation and before a court authorizes a taking; and it must show the taking is reasonably necessary and pay the full monetary equivalent of what is taken or damaged.¹ Courts, not utilities, decide whether a challenged taking is lawful.¹

Texas law requires any entity using eminent domain to give owners the Attorney General’s Landowner’s Bill of Rights, to make a bona fide offer before filing suit and to provide a written appraisal from a certified appraiser. It also states that property cannot be condemned for tax revenue or economic development.²

The federal backstop

States remain the main siting authorities for transmission. Under section 216 of the Federal Power Act, FERC can issue permits for lines in designated National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors, even where a developer could not obtain state siting approval, and a FERC permit carries eminent domain authority.¹⁰¹¹ FERC’s Order No. 1977, issued May 13, 2024, revised those rules: a permit holder must make a good faith effort to engage landowners before using eminent domain, and following FERC’s Applicant Code of Conduct is one way to show it.¹¹

Most easements are signed voluntarily. Condemnation is the fallback, and the formal steps exist mainly to protect owners. The sequence below follows the Virginia and Texas summaries; details and deadlines vary by state.¹²

Survey access is often the first fight. PSEG sued hundreds of Maryland landowners who refused to let its surveyors onto their land for the Piedmont line. In August 2026 the Fourth Circuit upheld a June 2025 district court ruling allowing the surveys, rejecting the landowners’ argument that surveys should wait until the state Public Service Commission grants a construction certificate.³

Some states also allow a “quick take,” in which the condemnor deposits its estimate of just compensation with the court and takes title and possession when it files, leaving the amount to be fought over later. Ask an eminent domain attorney early whether your state allows this and what deadlines apply.

Just compensation for an easement is usually two parts. The first is the value of the rights taken in the strip. The second is damage to the remainder: the loss in value of the land outside the easement, measured by comparing the market value of the property before and after the taking.⁵ For farmland the remainder damage may be small. For land with development value, it can be the larger number, because a corridor across the middle of a tract can split it into pieces that no longer work for a large building pad.

In practice, utilities often price the strip as a percentage of the fee (full ownership) value per acre. A Minnesota legislative working group on landowner payments, created in 2005, described the usual method as a one-time payment based on a percentage of the value of the land in the easement; southwestern Minnesota farm owners asked instead for annual payments tied to current land values, which utilities opposed and the group found would cost more than the existing system.¹² The idea has resurfaced in other states, but the one-time payment remains the norm.

In Texas, owners may hire their own appraiser and an attorney to negotiate or to represent them in the condemnation case.² An appraisal that captures the land’s highest and best use, including data center or industrial potential where the market supports it, can matter more than any per-acre formula. Our guide to what drives data center land value explains that premium.

Several states have added rules beyond the constitutional floor. These examples show the range; check your own state’s statutes.

Minnesota’s election is unusual and powerful. The state supreme court held in 2015 (Great River Energy v. Swedzinski) that courts may not weigh outside factors when an owner elects to compel a full purchase.⁷ For an owner weighing a data center sale, that option changes the negotiation entirely, because the utility could end up owning the whole tract.

Data center demand is now a stated reason for many new lines, and the land they cross often has no direct connection to the data centers they serve. Opponents of Maryland’s Piedmont project have called it an “extension cord to Virginia,” because the load it serves is largely across the state line.⁸

Lines that serve data center clusters also run through suburbs. In Loudoun County, Virginia, the State Corporation Commission issued a final order in July 2026 allowing Dominion Energy’s roughly nine-mile Golden to Mars line to run through a homeowner’s backyard, over neighborhood objections.¹³ Approval of a route is not the same as access to land: the Virginia Farm Bureau stresses that State Corporation Commission approval does not give a utility free access to private property, which still has to be acquired by easement or condemnation.¹

For data center land, the issue cuts both ways. A new substation or line can make a tract more valuable, as our guide to transmission upgrades and cost allocation explains. But a corridor that bisects a tract can wipe out a building pad. Check the state commission’s docket for proposed routes before signing an option, and look for recorded easements in the title commitment.

1. 01Ask for the project name, voltage, docket number and the route map, then read the state commission filing yourself.
2. 02Do not sign a survey permission or easement form until you understand its scope; survey access can be litigated, as Maryland showed.³
3. 03Get the written offer and any appraisal, and ask whether your state requires the company to pay for your own appraisal or provide a bill of rights.²
4. 04Negotiate terms, not only price: corridor width, access routes, gates, crop and construction damage, tree clearing, future additional circuits and assignment.
5. 05Have the remainder appraised for highest and best use if the land has development potential.⁵
6. 06Retain an eminent domain attorney before deadlines run, especially if your state allows a quick take.

If you are deciding whether a corridor ruins a site for a data center, we can get a site reviewed for buildable area, access and power. Our landowner’s guide covers the wider path from first inquiry to a signed deal.