Now, she’s fighting to keep it.
“It’s the place we find peace,” Quintero said. “Why do we have to give that up?”
Grant County Public Utility District has filed lawsuits to take part of Quintero’s property along with portions of eight other homes and farms in order to build electric transmission lines — part of a quarter billion dollar project to move more power to Quincy, a town that has become the state’s de facto data center hub.
Data centers are demanding more energy than ever to fuel artificial intelligence, and the utility is not only running out of locally sourced electricity but also power-line capacity. To build more, the PUD considered running lines through public lands, protected habitats, farms or people’s homes. In the end, the utility concluded it would be fastest to take private property.
Time is precious, as the utility stands to make millions potentially every month the new lines are up, officials said. But it’s trying to buy the land it needs to do that at a fraction of its value.
Property owners say the utility’s actions amount to theft, and are asking a judge to throw out the condemnation cases, which are awaiting a decision. They say the lines will make it more difficult to farm their land and are worried the high voltage will interfere with electronics keeping them alive.
Chuck Allen, a spokesperson for the PUD, declined an interview but wrote in an email the nonprofit utility is required to serve growth approved by local governments and that the money it makes from transmission lines will help subsidize rates for locals. And he said the utility is paying less than full market value because it’s not taking ownership of the land; it’s just using it, indefinitely.
What’s happening to Quintero and her neighbors in Grant County is likely only the beginning. Thousands of miles of electrical lines need to be built across the Western U.S. to keep up with energy demands. And they’ll need to cut through land owned by somebody.
Data centers
Grant County PUD set limits on the amount of electricity data centers could use last year because of how fast they were growing.
Microsoft alone owns 21 data center buildings in Quincy. Companies Sabey, Vantage, Cyrus One, NTT Data, Hyscale and H5 also operate campuses clustered there. Data centers accounted for 37% of the electricity used in Grant County last year, according to the utility.
Utility staff warned last year data center growth fueled by the rise of AI could soon increase the risk of outages and voltage instability across the grid, so the organization capped the facilities' power use.
But billions of dollars are on the line as technology companies race to meet AI demand, and Grant County PUD is feeling the heat. Utility staff reported last year that conversations with their large customers were quickly becoming challenging.
The primary bottleneck isn’t a lack of electricity (even with local hydropower running out, the utility can buy more from other places) — it’s the ability to move it where it needs to go. Transmission lines can only carry so much electricity, and the ones bringing power to Quincy are pretty much maxed out.
The utility saw this coming. In 2019, they started working on the Quincy Transmission Expansion Plan, which would add six new transmission lines at a cost of about $260 million. Microsoft, the largest data center operator in Quincy by far, has committed more than $2.6 million to the project, court records show.
Once completed, the utility says it will double the amount of power that can be brought into Quincy — from 372 megawatts to 750.
One segment stands out — a 31-mile line from Wanapum Dam to Quincy, which the utility calls the “biggest and most important” part of the project. It’s also the most controversial, cutting across 112 parcels of land, including 34 homes.
The utility says it expects construction to begin in 2028 and the transmission line to deliver power by 2029. But that could be delayed as homeowners and farmers along the line fight back against what they call a land grab.
“My land is being stolen”
If Grant County PUD gets its way, it will build transmission lines over Quintero’s front yard that will be twice as tall as the existing distribution lines that go over it. The transmission lines would sit on 100-foot-tall thick, steel poles, carrying enough electricity to produce an audible crackle.
Quintero’s mother, Maria Ruesga, sat by the grill watching her daughter cook. The 75-year-old has a pacemaker, an electronic device implanted to help regulate her heart. Although studies have generally not found electromagnetic currents from transmission lines to impact modern pacemakers, Ruesga said she worries about her health.
Felicitas’ husband, Ismael Quintero, said he’s frustrated his family is paying the price to serve power for data centers, which he says keep gobbling up the region’s resources.
“They’re taking the water, they’re taking electricity,” Ismael said, referring to what’s used to cool and power data centers.
“Now, they’re taking our land,” said his daughter, Deisy Quintero.
Some of the Quintero’s neighbors whose farmland is being targeted say the lines would interfere with their circle irrigation systems and reduce the amount of land they’re able to farm.
Darrin Reynolds, a corn and alfalfa farmer who has worked his plot in Grant County for decades, said the lines would prevent him from using an electric fence enclosure to graze his cattle and endanger the lives of the airplane pilots who spray fertilizers and chemicals on his crops. And he said his daughter and her husband canceled their plans to build a house on the farm because they didn’t want to raise their children next to a high-voltage power line.
“I’m pissed off about it,” Reynolds said. “My land is being stolen for the benefit of these data centers.”
Speed
Grant County PUD had ways to reduce the number of homeowners affected, but the utility prioritized speed.
The PUD considered four other routes to add a line between Wanapum Dam and Quincy. Two would have affected fewer than 10 homes. The utility chose one that went through 34 private residences, the most of all the options. Since it was chosen, costs for the route have ballooned — from $40 million to $86 million — due to materials inflation and needing to rebuild existing power lines along the route, the utility said.
In a legal declaration justifying the condemnation of property, Grant County PUD Senior Vice President Jeff Grizzel stated that while other routes affected fewer homes, they would have required more permitting and environmental mitigation to go through state and federal lands. Bypassing that would allow it to start selling power sooner, and for each month the line was in service, Grizzel said the utility stood to receive “hundreds of thousands to potentially millions of dollars,” benefiting local farmers and residents.
But the Quinteros may only see a tiny fraction. To use a third of an acre of their front lawn, Grant County PUD has offered a one-time payment of $2,415 — 25% of the fair market value.
“It's just ridiculous. It's kind of offensive,” Felicitas Quintero said. “How come, if they're going to get millions, they're giving property owners such a ridiculous amount?”
The utility said it’s paying a fraction of the land’s fair market value because it isn’t taking full ownership; it’s taking an easement, which grants the utility permission to access and use a portion forever. Landowners can still use their property under the lines, although they are limited in what they can place there.
The Quinteros and seven other families have asked a Grant County judge to throw out the utility’s petition to condemn their land, saying the PUD failed to offer “just compensation.” The landowners say they should be given 100% of fair market value and argue the PUD’s offer ignores how much their property will depreciate due to the lines.
It’s unethical, unfair, and it's a ridiculous, tiddly little amount of money for this kind of impact, forever, to our family farm, said Lisa Marcusen, who was offered $20,400 for 4.2 acres.
Grant County’s grid build-out is happening earlier than most places. Across the Western United States, utilities and planners have identified more than 12,600 miles of high-voltage transmission lines that need to be built or upgraded over the next decade.
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