The AI Data centers in WV are needing transmission lines that have to go through farms. Valleylink I believe can invoke imminent domain for their data center power updates

What Valley Link is and what it wants

Valley Link Transmission is a joint venture of American Electric Power, Dominion Energy, and FirstEnergy. Its Valley North project is a proposed 260-mile, 765-kilovolt high-voltage line running from Putnam County, West Virginia, all the way to Frederick County, Maryland. Roughly 225 of those miles would cut through West Virginia. The line exists, critics say, almost entirely to feed the data centers of Northern Virginia, and West Virginia farmers are the ones whose land sits in the path.

How eminent domain actually works here

The power does not kick in automatically. To build a high-voltage transmission line, a utility must first win a permit from West Virginia's Public Service Commission. That permit process is where the finding of public necessity happens, and it is where landowners get to be heard. Only after approval can Valley Link move toward acquiring rights of way, first by negotiating easements with property owners voluntarily, and then, if owners refuse, by pursuing eminent domain to force the sale.

An easement is narrower than a full land seizure. The landowner keeps title but loses the right to block the line, and receives compensation for that loss. If eminent domain is invoked, federal and state law require just compensation based on fair market value, though affected landowners argue that number rarely reflects what a line through the middle of a working farm actually costs them.

The central argument against it

The legal fight turns on the word "public." Eminent domain requires that a taking serve public use, not private profit. Opponents, including West Virginia state Senator Bill Hamilton, argue that the Valley North line will carry no power for West Virginians at all, that it would consume more than 6,300 acres of private West Virginia land, and that the cost would land on West Virginia ratepayers in the form of higher electric bills, all to benefit trillion-dollar data center companies in another state. Courts have denied condemnations on exactly this logic before: a 1984 Mississippi Supreme Court ruling blocked a power company's condemnation because the line provided no benefit to in-state customers.

Valley Link's own position is that the project strengthens regional grid reliability for everyone in the PJM transmission territory, which gives it the public-use argument it needs. That is a real legal distinction, and it is the one regulators will have to weigh.

What a landowner should know right now

Valley Link has said eminent domain would be a last resort. The company is expected to announce its preferred route and then begin approaching landowners for survey access and easement options. You are not obligated to sign anything casually. Any document a company representative presents deserves a careful read and, before you sign, a conversation with an attorney who handles property and easement law in West Virginia. The procedural steps still ahead, specifically the Public Service Commission review, are the moment when public opposition can actually influence the outcome.