On a hot July afternoon drive, Linda and Lewis Rainey surveyed a prairie hay field nestled in their 400 acres of fields and farmland in Guthrie. It contains buffalo wallows — depressions in the land created by bison rolling in the dirt, which now serve as basins for rainwater and runoff. To their knowledge, the patch of land has never been plowed.
For the past eight months, the Raineys have been fighting a planned transmission line that would cross that hay field and carve out a 130-foot easement. They worry the development would threaten their forebears' work to preserve the land, and their younger family members' ability to live comfortably on the property.
Linda's great-grandfather staked a claim on the original 160 acres during the 1889 Landrun — he fought a lengthy court battle against a Sooner to acquire the property rights. The Raineys' great-grandchildren are the seventh generation to live on the land, one of Oklahoma's 1,900 centennial farms.
"We do have a lot of acres, but we walk every bit of it," Lewis Rainey, 82, said. "We count the trees in it. We know what kind of trees they are. We know where the trails go through that have been here for centuries. Deer roam in our yard. We wake up in the morning and there's quail and dove and turkeys. It just gives you a warm feeling when you look out on your own land and know that people before us have sacrificed so much to pass this down to us. And it's our duty, our responsibility, to do the same in the future."
The proposed transmission line would cross over two 80-acre tracts of the Raineys' property, including an area of land where their granddaughter had plans to build a home for her family. Linda said the line means "dreams are being burst."
But the Raineys' concerns extend miles beyond their own property. They are worried that the transmission line would help to power proposed hyperscale data centers in Luther and Piedmont, the two towns on either end of the line's route. The Raineys have joined a chorus of local voices advocating against data centers in both towns.
Residents' concerns about data centers have made it more difficult to advance the transmission project, according to a spokesperson for Transource, the company building the line. Although official communications from Transource have sought to shift attention away from the data centers, the facilities play a significant role in the state's growing electric load — and could impact the ultimate function of new power infrastructure.
A shifting electrical landscape
In November, the Raineys received a letter notifying them that they lived near the area being considered for the Mathewson-Redbud Transmission Line Project. The project would create a 40-mile high-voltage corridor connecting electrical facilities in Luther and Piedmont.
A Transource pamphlet accompanying the letter described the project as "vital for maintaining reliable power in the area," saying it would save between $138 million and $225 million in electricity costs in the coming 40 years.
The Southwest Power Pool is the regional transmission organization that oversees the electrical grid in much of the central U.S., including Oklahoma. The SPP laid out plans for the line in their 2023 Integrated Transmission Planning Assessment Report, which aimed to plan transmission projects based on load growth and reliability forecasts for the coming decade.
Casey Cathey, the vice president of engineering at SPP, explained that the region's existing "backbone" of high-voltage transmission lines and substations has neared its top capacity.
"Think about that as the highway system of the nation, from a road perspective. And now's the time to start looking at building out the interstate system," Cathey said.
In terms of what's adding traffic to the SPP's electric grid, Cathey cited new ammonia plants, cryptocurrency mining, the adoption of electric vehicles and a booming oil and gas industry. SPP's 2025 Integrated Transmission Planning Assessment Report echoed that sentiment.
Data centers have become an increasingly significant part of that load growth. In an October 2025 report, McKinsey and Company researchers estimated that the emergence of data centers, many of which are used to power artificial intelligence and cloud computing, could account for 14% of the United States' power demand by 2030.
The power needs of hyperscale data centers and similar large load electrical customers are "insanely big," Cathey said — comparable to those of a small city.
"What it's doing is basically adding fuel to the fire," said Rep. Brad Boles, R-Marlowe. Boles is the Republican nominee for the vacant seat on the Oklahoma Corporation Commission and currently chairs the state Committee on Energy and Natural Resources Oversight.
"With the growth of the demand of electricity in Oklahoma and the country, we were going to need more power even without AI data centers. The growth is gonna happen. and I think what the AI data centers have done is basically just expedite that growth," he said. "We're needing more transmission than we've ever needed, in a shorter timeline than we needed it in the past."
Piedmont, Luther and in between
Since the Raineys learned about the Mathewson-Redbud transmission line, they've made it a point to attend local government meetings in Luther and Piedmont where data centers have been up for consideration, joining local resistance against the projects.
Lewis Rainey said it has been "heart-wrenching" to hear from the families in those towns who live close to the proposed data centers. He described concerns about high electricity consumption and added strain on the water table linked to the proposals in Piedmont. Linda said she is worried that once data centers are built, they'll be sold to larger corporations. After that, she thinks, locals will lose control.
"We're in our 80s, and this should be a time when we can concentrate on travel, being with our family and doing what we want," Linda said. "And then we have this big project in front of us that we don't want, and we want to help fight for others that don't want it, and we just think it's gobbling up the land. When they gobble it up, we don't own it anymore."
Luther's Board of Trustees voted in June to pass a six-month moratorium on re-zoning or permitting for data centers after a pending proposal sparked resounding opposition.
Piedmont's city council decided in late July to defer a decision on a data center proposal to their planning commission and pursue further studies.
The towns are among several Oklahoma municipalities that have recently considered data center proposals and faced community backlash, including Yukon, Claremore, Edmond, Oklahoma City and Sand Springs. Several have passed moratoriums like Luther's.
Michael Harris, a project outreach specialist for Transource parent company American Electric Power, emphasized that SPP outlined the need for the Mathewson-Redbud line in 2023. At that point, Harris said, data centers had yet to enter "the popular zeitgeist."
"I think one of the the big obstacles we've been running into — with not just this, but a lot of the higher voltage transmission line projects, not just in Oklahoma, but really everywhere right now — is the instant association or assumption that they're tied to a data center or a large load industrial customer," Harris explained.
An Oklahoma Watch investigation last month found that existing power infrastructure in Piedmont, particularly the Mathewson Substation, was a significant draw for companies hoping to build data centers in the area. Transmission infrastructure can impact economic development.
Aaron Bilyeu is the chief development officer for prospective data center developer Cloverleaf Infrastructure. At a late-July city council meeting in Piedmont, Bilyeu doubled down.
"We are here because of the proximity to the Mathewson Substation," he said. "And being able to build a data center next to that is one of the best data center sites in the state of Oklahoma."
Council Member Byron Schlomach asked Bilyeu explicitly whether the planned transmission line between Piedmont and Luther — the Mathewson-Redbud line — was what made the area attractive.
"Yes," Schlomach answered. "It is all of the power generation and transmission lines coming into that substation."
Harris, meanwhile, maintained that Transource was unable to give landowners a conclusive answer about whether data centers would or would not utilize the transmission line. He also said that data center developers look for more than simply the availability of power when siting their facilities.
It's possible that a transmission line not built for data centers could eventually power them, according to Cathey.
Cathey said that SPP aims to calculate the "40-year useful life" of a new transmission facility, and that the value of a facility can change dynamically over time.
"Certainly, additional load can benefit from the facilities that were paid for by previous customers," he said, affirming that data centers would be held responsible for paying for the power they use.
The waiting game
Linda Rainey described the last several months of developments around the transmission line as a "domino effect." The initial letter they received in mid-November invited them to attend open houses in Cashion and Guthrie in December, where they could meet with a Transource team member to learn more about the project. It also set a deadline of January 7 to share feedback about the project.
The Raineys attended the Cashion meeting, and Linda used the feedback window to email all three members of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission and executives at Transource and Oklahoma Gas and Electric. Her letters included a 13-point description of her concerns: the family history on the land, potential health risks, noise pollution and data centers, among other items.
On February 20, Harris sent landowners, including the Raineys, a new letter telling them that a project team was at work reviewing feedback and that they planned to determine a final route for the line the following month.
About a week later, a right of way agent affiliated with the project stopped by their home to confirm for them that a potential route ran through their property.
"It's like the big people have come through and said, 'This is what's going to happen and you have no choice,'" Linda said. "And we can only do what we feel like we can do. I don't think that they really listen."
Transource has yet to finalize the route for the line and submit it to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission for approval. An early timeline for the project, included in the November Transource pamphlet the Raineys received, projected that the route would be finalized by spring 2026.
Harris said the process has been delayed because of the volume of feedback Transource received. He said he understood landowners' concerns and empathized with their expectation that they be included in the decision-making process.
"We've received so much feedback from the public.We're trying to accommodate as much as we can based on concerns that have been brought up, since the point that we announced this project back late November and then had the open houses in December," Harris said. "I'm not just trying to pat ourselves on the back either, but I think the purpose of those open houses really was to try to engage the public on the front end as much as we could."
For now, though, the Raineys still feel in the dark. They remain motivated by the legacy of Linda's grandfather and other relatives who worked to protect their land from similar developments.
"It may happen," Linda added. "But we can say that we fought it."
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