TOWN OF SAUKVILLE, Wis. (CBS 58) — Tom Uttech showed a photo of the land he bought nearly 40 years ago and listed all the ways he's transformed a piece of Ozaukee County farmland into sprawling woods and prairie grass.

"A bunch of evergreens I planted by hand," Uttech noted. "Hundreds of them."

Uttech had worried some of those tall pines would be torn down when the American Transmission Company (ATC) last year proposed building new power lines to supply electricity for a massive data center under construction outside Port Washington.

As a landscape artist, Uttech said the wilderness he's grown is at the core of his identity.

"It would destroy the kind of a landscape I created," he said. "Which my artwork was reinforced and benefited from."

Uttech signed on with the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), a conservative law firm.

Last October, WILL sent ATC a letter threatening a lawsuit on Uttech's behalf. The notice was a preemptive measure, anticipating ATC could try to use the power of eminent domain to take land from Uttech, who had no interest in selling any property to the utility.

"They never got around to [making an offer] because I just was not cooperating," Uttech said with a smile.

Kirk Harris, a real estate law professor at UW-Milwaukee, noted the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 2005 Kelo case that eminent domain can be used to take land for private companies, as long as those companies provided a public use.

Harris said whether building power infrastructure for a data center amounts to a public use could pose an interesting question for courts in the coming years.

The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSCW) initially determined ATC's application for the new transmission lines was incomplete.

This week, ATC filed a new application with a proposed new route. Uttech's property was not on it, and ATC noted the route it's now pursuing no longer goes through the towns of Saukville or Trenton.

"Obviously, very pleasant and rewarding," Uttech said. "Because of the hours and hours myself and other people had put into convincing them to stop this route and go elsewhere."

When reached for comment, ATC referred to a press release it sent out Monday outlining the new application it submitted to the PSCW.

"Since the previous filing, we've substantially improved our application by continued gathering of information from landowners, local officials, state agencies and other stakeholders," Jared Winters, an executive vice president with ATC, said in the release.

If the PSCW finds this application to be complete, the next step in the process would be allowing public comment.

You can find all of ATC's new application filings HERE.