Meet the ‘mini Erin Brockoviches’ fighting off eminent domain—and the shadow of Amazon—as a data center hands out $10,000 to their neighbors
Fortune · C · trust 54/100
Erika Cook knew about NorthPoint Development’s plans for a 1,300-acre data center years before Hazle Township residents received a letter in the mail in June, outlining a potential $10,000 payday for eligible households who agreed to the data center’s construction.
Receiving the money was contingent upon the residents of the rural Pennsylvania region at the foot of the Poconos allowing the developer to build a 15-building campus, dubbed Project Hazelnut. NorthPoint’s proposal to Hazle Township was a $165 million investment in the area, which beyond the payout for “eligible households” in the township’s 4,500-property township, also included funding for a local police department, according to the letter to residents viewed by Fortune .
The Wall Street Journal was first to report the $10,000 incentive, which would only be paid once the first building of the data center campus is complete, and which was largely rejected by the township’s residents.
In their efforts to combat Project Hazelnut, locals told Fortune they’ve discovered just how large these efforts extend, potentially to Amazon , whose name is conspicuously absent from all Hazelnut and NorthPoint branding.
Local officials and NorthPoint refused to confirm if Amazon would be Hazelnut’s end-user, but locals began filing right-to-know requests and confirmed Amazon’s role in the project when records were released in January between Amazon and the Pennsylvania’s Department of Community and Economic Development.
The emails, viewed by Fortune and previously reported on by local outlets, showed that while state officials tried to disclose Amazon’s role in the project, Amazon wanted its involvement to be covert due to 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 published on Friday, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said the company has committed to no longer entering into nondisclosure agreements with government agencies related to data-center projects.
Beyond being frustrated with the secrecy, locals said they were baffled by the lack of specifics and clarity the stakeholders had about the project, per the records.
“We really had no idea what was happening,” Cook told Fortune , “and a hyperscaler data center of what they’re proposing—1,300 acres—is not a small project. We’ve been trying to get information, and unfortunately, the only way we’ve been able to get it is by right-to-know requests.”
NorthPoint did not respond to Fortune ’s request for comment.
Cook, an insurance agent living in Sugarloaf Township next door, has her own reasons to oppose the data center project. She owns one of the 28 properties facing eminent domain threats from local utility company PPL Electric Utilities for that very same data-center offering the five-figure check, Cook said. In 2024, the utilities company and a developer approached residents in Luzerne County, where Sugarloaf is located, handing out pamphlets asserting the right of eminent domain, or the government’s power to seize private property in the public’s interest. PPL Electric Utilities proposed an 11.2-mile high-voltage power line running through the homes that would supply electricity to the campus.
Hazle Township residents’ disdain for the $10,000 incentive is just the tip of the iceberg, Cook said. Impacted residents and neighbors formed the Alliance to Stop the Line and have filed about 20 formal protests with the Public Utilities Commission challenging PPL’s plans, arguing a high-voltage line would decimate property values, emit noise pollution, and generate electromagnetic fields associated with health risks, next to their homes.
Last month PUC administrative law judges temporarily halted proceedings for the powerline, determining it was too early to grant utility extensions while the data-center developments had yet to be approved and were still being contested in court. In the first three months of 2026, at least 75 data center projects worth more than $130 billion connectively were delayed or cancelled, and active opposition groups across 49 states grew from 396 from the end of last year to 833 by March, according to a Data Center Watch report published in June.
Hazle Township is familiar with grassroots protests over social and economic issues. Hazle Township completely encircles the City of Hazleton, which became the face of an anti-immigrant movement two decades ago, when then-Mayor Lou Barletta passed the controversial Illegal Immigration Relief Act , fining landlords who rented to undocumented immigrants and withholding permits from businesses employing those immigrants. Barletta capitalized on a period of deindustrialization and demographic changes to draw in working-class, white supporters. Barletta ran for Pennsylvania governor in 2022, losing in the Republican primary, while Hazleton continued to become a heavily Hispanic city afterward, scrambling commentators’ brains as many of those residents chose to vote Republican.
Residents of these northeastern Pennsylvania towns today see their campaign as a small but vital part of a national opposition to the AI infrastructure buildout associated with rising costs and widespread environmental risks. The widely cited statistic is that nearly 70% of Americans oppose a data center being built in their area, according to surveys by both Gallup and NBC News . “The data-center rebellion, with its local origins and compounding grievances,” The Atlantic ‘s George Packer recently noted, “is thoroughly American.”
According to local protester Annie Vinatieri, today’s data-center protests are a nonpartisan movement driven primarily by Americans with little experience with environmentalism, with demographics “mostly white working and middle/upper class.” She said a minority of Dominican Americans, “almost all of whom are immigrants,” have…
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