On the Scent

Pennsylvania Protects Your House From This Power Line by 100 Meters. It Protects Your Farm by Nothing.

FREEDOM BEAGLE STAFF · AUGUST 6, 2026

“This is a single-purpose line,” Terry Snoddy, a third-generation farmer, told a Pennsylvania Farm Bureau press conference. “It is their personal extension cord. It is not for the public use.”

That is the whole argument of this series, stated in three sentences by a man who stands to lose about five acres of production to it. Whether he is legally right is a separate question — and the answer, under Pennsylvania law as written, is probably no. But the gap between what the statute protects and what it doesn’t is the story here, and it is sharper in Pennsylvania than in either entry that came before.

By the numbers

9 miles — approximate length of the proposed PPL Electric Utilities transmission line
230,000 volts (230 kV) — the line’s voltage class
150 feet — width of the right-of-way
5 — route options under evaluation
2 counties, 2 townships — Union and Lycoming; Gregg and Washington
~600 acres — preserved farmland potentially affected in Gregg Township alone
1,000+ acres — potential total preserved farmland exposure including Washington Township
~1,000 acres — farmed by Brett Taylor, nearly all of it inside the proposed corridor
$60,000–$70,000 — Taylor’s estimated annual loss from aerial-applicator restrictions near the line
100 meters — the buffer Pennsylvania law places around a dwelling house, under 15 Pa.C.S. § 1511(b)(1)(i)
0 — equivalent statutory buffer for cropland

Sources: NorthcentralPA, WNEP

What the line is for

The corridor would run to Great Stream Commons in Allenwood, Union County, where PNK Group has planned a five-building complex. Two buildings are finished. The remaining three are expected within about three years, and four of the five could operate as data centers. One completed building is leased to ModCorr, a Texas-based modular prison manufacturer — a reminder that “data center campus” describes the plan, not yet the whole of what has actually been built there.

PNK Group’s corporate history is a matter of public record: the company was founded in 2004 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, by Andrey Sharkov, maintains a Russian headquarters in Moscow, and formally separated its U.S. operations in 2023. We note this because it is factual and because readers will encounter it elsewhere; we draw no inference from it about the merits of the transmission project, and none should be read into its inclusion here.

The legal mechanism, in plain terms

Pennsylvania grants eminent domain to public utility corporations through 15 Pa.C.S. § 1511, part of the Business Corporation Law. Subsection (a)(3) reaches “the production, generation, manufacture, transmission, storage, distribution or furnishing of … electricity … to or for the public.”

That power is not self-executing. Under § 1511(c), the condemnation authority for aerial electric facilities may be exercised “only after the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission … has found and determined … that the service to be furnished by the corporation … is necessary or proper.” The PUC certificate comes first; the taking comes second. Pennsylvania courts have also held that a utility need not prove absolute necessity to condemn — a meaningfully lower bar than the phrase “necessary or proper” might suggest to a lay reader.

Two structural facts follow from this, and both matter more than any single landowner’s case.

First, local government is out of the loop entirely. Transmission lines are not subject to local zoning under Pennsylvania’s Municipalities Planning Code. A township cannot zone the corridor away. Route selection rests with the PUC. Compare that to Virginia, where — as the last entry in this series documented — a school board’s statutory veto was strong enough to push a regulator onto a route it had itself called “clearly inferior.” Pennsylvania hands no comparable veto to anyone local.

Second, the statute protects houses and says nothing about fields. Section 1511(b)(1)(i) bars condemning, for aerial electric transmission, “any dwelling house or … any part of the reasonable curtilage of a dwelling house within 100 meters therefrom.” That is a real, hard protection — and notably stronger than Virginia’s 60-foot rule, which a court can waive on a finding that building elsewhere would be “impractical, without unreasonable expense.” Pennsylvania’s 100-meter buffer has no such judicial escape hatch in the text.

But it is a buffer around a dwelling. Cropland gets no equivalent. Neither, as written, does preserved farmland — the acreage a landowner has already placed under permanent agricultural easement, at public expense, specifically to keep it in production. Roughly 600 acres of it sits in the Gregg Township exposure alone; the figure may exceed 1,000 acres once Washington Township is counted.

The disruption is not hypothetical

Todd Hiller reports losing about five acres of corn to damage during earlier PPL construction between February and March, plus another five acres he was unable to plant. Terry Snoddy expects roughly five acres out of production. Brett Taylor farms about 1,000 acres, nearly all of it inside the proposed corridor, and estimates $60,000 to $70,000 in annual losses — not from the land the towers physically occupy, but from restrictions on aerial application near an energized 230 kV line. That last number is the one most often missed in these fights: the taking is measured in the easement, but the loss is measured in what you can no longer do on the land you keep.

The conflicts run into local government too. Two Washington Township supervisors whose own farms lie in the proposed corridor have had to recuse themselves from related votes, and solicitors and planning-commission volunteers across both townships and both counties have similarly stepped back over potential conflicts.

What the record supports, and what it doesn’t

Brett Taylor has argued that PPL is effectively acting as a contractor for the data center project and is the only party in the arrangement holding eminent domain authority — which, on his account, is why the utility is involved at all. That is his characterization, and we report it as such. It is not established fact, and PPL’s certificate application will be judged by the PUC on the statutory standard, not on that framing.

What is established: the line’s stated purpose is to serve a specific private commercial development; the acreage at risk is large and includes preserved farmland; the statutory buffer that protects homes does not extend to cropland; and no local body has authority to alter the route.

What we’re not saying

Nothing here alleges PPL Electric Utilities, PNK Group, or the PUC has broken the law. No certificate has been challenged in these pages, and no taking described here has been adjudicated. Whether this line meets § 1511(c)’s “necessary or proper” standard is a question for the PUC and, on review, the courts — not for us. We also take no position on whether the data center complex should be built. The finding of this entry is narrower and, we think, harder to argue with: Pennsylvania’s condemnation statute draws a bright line around a house and no line at all around the field, and in a buildout driven by demand from a single class of private customer, that asymmetry decides who absorbs the cost.

Where this goes next

The Pennsylvania Farm Bureau is backing legislation to require fuller landowner compensation. It passed the state Senate unanimously and awaits a House floor vote. By its own supporters’ account, it does not close the preserved-farmland gap described above.

There is local memory to draw on here. About eighty-five years ago, roughly 8,000 acres around the village of Alvira — a few miles from this corridor — were seized by eminent domain during the Second World War to build a TNT plant. The residents did not get the land back. People in Union and Lycoming counties are not learning what condemnation means for the first time.

Entry #4 of The Grid Grab goes to Maryland, and #5 to Indiana.

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