When Infrastructure Tells You What You Can’t Do on Your Own Land... Like Hunt
How a Transmission Line Fight in Maryland Crossed Into Hunting, Food, and Property Rights
There are moments when a regulatory fight crosses an invisible line — when the public realizes something deeper has shifted.
In Maryland, that moment came when landowners learned they could be temporarily barred from hunting on their own property — not because of wildlife law, not because of safety violations, and not because of a criminal act — but because a utility company wanted to survey land for a transmission line that hasn’t even been approved yet.
This isn’t a hypothetical.
This isn’t internet rumor.
And it isn’t fringe speculation.
It is unfolding now, in federal court, tied to a major infrastructure project known as the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project.
And it raises a question rural America is being forced to confront more often:
If you can’t hunt, manage wildlife, or feed your family on your own land — do you still truly own it?
The Project Behind the Fight
The Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project (MPRP) is a proposed high-voltage transmission line stretching roughly 70 miles across central Maryland, cutting through working farms, private woodlots, and generational family properties in Baltimore, Carroll, and Frederick counties.
The developer, PSEG, argues the line is necessary to maintain grid reliability and meet surging electricity demand — particularly demand linked to Northern Virginia’s rapidly expanding data-center corridor, much of it tied to cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure.
That broader demand context matters. But what has set this case apart is not the line itself — it’s how early access to private land is being asserted, and how far that access is now reaching.
Survey First. Permission Later.
Before a transmission line can be built, Maryland law requires the Public Service Commission to issue a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCN) — a formal determination that the project is justified and that impacts have been weighed.
That process is still ongoing.
Yet surveyors have already been authorized — through court orders — to enter private land before final approval, under the theory that surveying is a preliminary, non-possessory activity.
Landowners have challenged this repeatedly, arguing that allowing physical entry before approval reverses due process: once survey data is gathered, routes become de facto decided.
This dispute has now climbed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, where landowners are asking a simple question with massive implications:
Should private property be opened to corporate entry before the state has even decided the project is necessary?
But while that legal battle continues, something else happened — something that pushed this fight into an entirely new category.
The Hunting Restriction That Changed Everything
During the most recent phase of litigation, PSEG requested court-ordered restrictions on hunting during survey periods, citing safety concerns for survey crews operating during Maryland’s hunting season.
In plain terms:
Landowners were told they could not hunt on their own land while surveyors were present.
The court accepted the core premise — that active surveying and hunting should not occur simultaneously in close proximity — and imposed a framework requiring landowners to stand down from hunting during designated survey windows.
To regulators and attorneys, this may sound narrow and procedural.
To rural families, it landed like a thunderclap.
Why This Isn’t “Just About Hunting”
For many of the affected landowners, hunting is not recreation. It is:
Food procurement
Crop protection
Wildlife population management
A core element of rural self-reliance
Farmers like Melvin Baile Jr. have said plainly that being barred from hunting even temporarily interferes with their ability to protect crops from deer pressure and to provide food for their families.
This is where the story stops being about safety protocols — and starts being about who controls land use when ownership collides with infrastructure ambition.
If a third party can suspend a landowner’s lawful activities — not because the land has been condemned, not because the project has been approved, but because access is convenient — then property rights are no longer absolute. They are conditional.
A Quiet Expansion of Control
This case exposes a pattern that has been repeating nationwide:
Survey access is granted early
Restrictions are layered on “temporarily”
Normal land use becomes subordinate to infrastructure timelines
Temporary rules become precedent
Hunting today.
Livestock movement tomorrow.
Equipment access next season.
Once courts accept that a private landowner must modify lawful behavior for a non-approved project, the line between ownership and licensed use begins to blur.
This is not eminent domain — yet.
But it is something adjacent, something newer.
Food Sovereignty Meets Infrastructure Policy
Yanasa TV has covered food sovereignty for years — raw milk, small slaughter exemptions, herd shares, zoning fights, and regulatory pressure on self-sufficiency.
This case belongs in that lineage.
Food sovereignty is not just about what you eat.
It is about whether the state or a corporation can interrupt your ability to produce food on land you own.
When hunting becomes conditional — not on conservation law, but on survey schedules — sovereignty shifts.
Why This Case Matters Beyond Maryland
The MPRP dispute is being watched closely by landowner rights groups across the country because it offers a legal blueprint — both for utilities and for resistance.
If survey-first, restrict-later tactics are upheld, similar arguments will appear wherever:
Transmission corridors expand
CO₂ pipelines are proposed
Renewable energy projects seek early access
Data-center power demand accelerates
Conversely, if landowners succeed at the appellate level, it could slow or reshape how early-stage infrastructure access is granted nationwide.
The Question That Can’t Be Avoided
This case forces a reckoning:
If the government hasn’t approved the project…
If the land hasn’t been taken…
If the owner hasn’t consented…
Why is the owner the one being told to stand down?
That is the question Maryland farmers are asking.
And it is one rural America will hear again — because this is not the last transmission line, not the last survey crew, and not the last time food, land, and power collide.