Rural Pennsylvania has become an unlikely flashpoint in the national fight over data centers and AI infrastructure. In Hazle Township, NorthPoint Development offered the township's 4,500 residents each a potential $10,000 payday in exchange for permission to build a 1,300-acre data center, part of a proposed $165 million investment.
The plan, known as Project Hazelnut, also triggered resistance in nearby Sugarloaf Township, where about 30 properties faced eminent domain threats from the local utilities company over a proposed high-voltage power line meant to serve the same project. Residents formed Alliance to Stop the Line and filed 20 formal protests over the health and property-cost risks tied to the line, while others filed right-to-know requests seeking transparency on the end user.
Those requests showed the end user was Amazon. An Amazon spokesperson told Fortune it is 'evaluating multiple sites across the Commonwealth' but does not have a definitive agreement in place with NorthPoint.
What makes the fight notable is not just the scale of the project, but the coalition forming against it. Opponents described by locals include working-, middle- and upper-class residents, mostly white and not aligned neatly along party lines. One protester, Annie Vinatieri, said the effort felt like 'a righteous cause' because people who disagree on other issues can still find 'very real camaraderie' around the data center fight.
That local backlash fits a broader pattern. According to one Gallup poll, about 70% of Americans oppose data center construction in their local areas, including 75% of Democrats and 63% of Republicans. A Data Center Watch report published in June said at least 75 data center projects worth more than $130 billion total were delayed or cancelled in the first three months of this year, while active opposition groups grew from 396 to 833 over the same period.
Tatishe Nteta, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and director of UMass Poll, said tech companies have done little to explain the benefits of data centers to ordinary Americans. He said the costs have been communicated far more clearly, including energy use and the broader economic effects of artificial intelligence.
Even in a country split on nearly everything, the market is running into a wall when it asks local communities to surrender land, tolerate utility fights and trust that the upside will arrive later. Capital rewards clear rules, but it cannot ignore property rights without paying a political price.
That is the lesson from Hazle Township. The AI buildout may be sold as progress, but when taxpayer-adjacent incentives, eminent domain pressure and hidden end users collide, locals see the downside first. Power leaves a paper trail, and in Pennsylvania it is producing resistance.
