Pennsylvania has become a new front in the fight over data centers, and Hazle Township is in the middle of it. Residents are pushing back against NorthPoint Development’s Project Hazelnut, a proposed 1,300-acre, 15-building campus tied to a $165 million investment and a $10,000 incentive for eligible households that would be paid only after the first building is completed.
The offer, sent in a June letter to residents, was rejected by many in the township's 4,500-property area. The letter also said the proposal included funding for a local police department. The Wall Street Journal first reported the $10,000 incentive.
At the center of the backlash is a basic free-market question: who controls the land, and at what cost? Erika Cook, an insurance agent who lives in nearby Sugarloaf Township, said she opposes the project in part because her property is among 28 homes facing eminent domain threats from PPL Electric Utilities. She said the utility and a developer approached residents in Luzerne County in 2024 with pamphlets asserting the right of eminent domain for an 11.2-mile high-voltage power line that would supply electricity to the campus.
Residents have organized as the Alliance to Stop the Line and filed about 20 formal protests with the Public Utilities Commission. They argue the power line would cut property values, create noise pollution and generate electromagnetic fields associated with health risks, according to their filings.
The project’s ultimate customer has also become part of the dispute. Local officials and NorthPoint did not confirm Amazon as the end-user, but residents later found records released in January between Amazon and Pennsylvania’s Department of Community and Economic Development. Those emails, viewed by Fortune, showed state officials trying to disclose Amazon’s role while Amazon sought to keep its involvement covert because of what were described as broad contractual issues.
An Amazon spokesperson told Fortune the company is 'evaluating multiple sites across the Commonwealth' and is in discussions with NorthPoint, but does not have a definitive agreement in place. In a blog post on Friday, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said the company has committed to no longer entering nondisclosure agreements with government agencies related to data-center projects.
There is also a regulatory signal in the background. Last month, Public Utilities Commission administrative law judges temporarily halted proceedings for the power line, saying it was too early to grant utility extensions while the data-center developments were still being contested in court.
The numbers come first. In the first three months of 2026, at least 75 data center projects worth more than $130 billion were delayed or cancelled, and opposition groups across 49 states rose from 396 at the end of last year to 833 by March, according to a Data Center Watch report published in June.
What looks like a local zoning fight is really a broader test of property rights and state power. When a project depends on secrecy, utility buildouts and eminent domain threats, the taxpayer and the landowner are left to carry the risk while private capital seeks the upside. Capital rewards clear rules; it also exposes the cost when those rules are written around favored players rather than the public interest.
