‘Never seen anything quite like it’: How rural Pennsylvania’s $165 million data center fight became representative of the bipartisan battle against AI

Hazle Township, in northeastern Pennsylvania, has become an unlikely flashpoint in the AI boom. NorthPoint Development offered the township’s 4,500 residents a possible $10,000 each to clear the way for a 1,300-acre data center project called Project Hazelnut. Nearby, about 30 properties in Sugarloaf Township faced eminent domain threats tied to a high-voltage power line meant to feed the same project.

That setup has done something unusual: it has pushed people who do not normally end up in the same room into the same fight. Residents formed Alliance to Stop the Line and filed 20 formal protests against the utilities company, citing health risks and lower property values. Others filed right-to-know requests to learn who the end user was. Emails later identified Amazon, though the company says it is still evaluating multiple sites in Pennsylvania and has no final agreement with NorthPoint.

The politics are scrambled too. Annie Vinatieri, one of the protesters, described the coalition as working-, middle-, and upper-class residents who are mostly white and plainly nonpartisan. That fits the bigger pattern. A Gallup poll found about 70% of Americans oppose data center construction in their own areas, including 75% of Democrats and 63% of Republicans. And a Data Center Watch report said at least 75 projects worth more than $130 billion were delayed or cancelled in the first three months of this year, while active opposition groups more than doubled, from 396 to 833.

Pennsylvania has become a useful test case because the state has only 174 data centers out of about 4,767 projects in the U.S., yet it sits in a purple state where Governor Josh Shapiro has already reversed himself. He announced Project Hazelnut after an executive order to speed AI infrastructure, then later signed another order in August eliminating fast-track permits and shifting approval power to local agencies. With the governor’s race coming next month, the issue is no longer just about a power line in one township. It’s about whether local anger can actually bend the AI buildout.