In northern Iowa, Marjorie Swan and her sister, Romona Jean Ritter, park their off-road vehicle next to a corn field. The green leaves shake as another summer storm rolls in.
“This is where they want to put it,” Swan said, pointing from the fenceline to floodwaters on the horizon.
Summit Carbon Solutions plans to bury a pipeline here as part of a 2,500 mile-long network across five states. The company’s goal is to capture CO2 emissions from 57 ethanol plants and pump it roughly a mile underground near Bismarck, North Dakota.
On June 25, Iowa’s utility regulators approved Summit’s initial application and the right to use eminent domain, with some conditions.
Swan, wearing a button with “No Pipeline” written in bold letters, said she was driving when she heard the news over the radio that day.
“I just got a big knot in my stomach. I was like, really? But after finding out more things, it’s not over. It’s definitely not over,” said Swan.
Swan and other landowners impacted by the project are keeping a close eye on what happens next in the Dakotas. That’s because construction in Iowa cannot begin until both South Dakota and North Dakota issue permits. Meanwhile, Summit also needs permits in Minnesota and Nebraska, plus a second permit in Iowa, to complete the whole project. In addition, ongoing and expected lawsuits could put more hurdles before the finish line.
To qualify for federal tax credits worth billions of dollars, Summit and other CO2 pipeline companies have until January 2033 to start construction.
Why it’s contentious
Summit and its supporters say the project is crucial for the future of the ethanol industry. Cutting emissions would open doors to low-carbon fuel markets, like sustainable aviation fuel. They say more demand and premium prices would, in turn, benefit farmers and rural communities.
“We're an agricultural company building an infrastructure project, and it's a partnership based model. I think that's misunderstood,” Summit CEO Lee Blank said.
But the project has faced three years of resistance. Along with concerns about damage to farmland, insurance coverage and liability, many landowners oppose the use of eminent domain, especially by a private company.
“Eminent domain has a purpose for things that are really in the public interest, like our roads and bridges and water lines, but this just is not that. It is not a public convenience or necessity,” said Jess Mazour, conservation program coordinator for the Sierra Club of Iowa.
Jimmy Powell, Summit’s Chief Operations Officer, said the company is trying to accommodate landowners across the pipeline route.
“When you have infrastructure projects as large as this, [eminent domain] may come into play. But we're spending a lot of time working with landowners trying to make sure that they feel informed. And then if they feel comfortable signing an agreement, which three quarters of landowners have, then they do,” Powell said.
For some landowners, including Swan and Ritter, safety is their biggest concern. A CO2 pipeline owned by Denbury, Inc. ruptured in 2020 in Satartia, Mississippi, hindering emergency response efforts and sending 45 people to the hospital. In high concentrations, carbon dioxide can cause unconsciousness and death.
“There are other options we can do [to remove carbon from the air], we feel are much safer instead of tearing up good farm ground because it will never be the same,” Swan said.
Powell said what happened in Satartia was an unfortunate event that probably could have been avoided, based on the federal investigation. That includes addressing potential geohazards, like flooding and landslides.
“You can design around those situations, either moving the pipeline, putting it deeper; there are other things that you can do. [Denbury] just failed to do that,” Powell said.
South Dakota voters will weigh in
Several hundred miles northwest of Swan and Ritter’s Iowa farm, Summit still needs a permit for its critical South Dakota route.
Blank said the plan is to apply in the early fall, which should give the company enough time to find a route “in the most favorable way to the stakeholders in South Dakota.”
“In the event that we find a landowner that's not favorable to the project, we're working to find others that might be in the vicinity,” Blank said.
In 2023, the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission denied permit applications from Summit and another pipeline company, saying approval would violate local law; several counties have ordinances that require a certain distance between pipelines and buildings.
But a new South Dakota law – passed in the 2024 legislative session and signed by the governor – says a permit from state regulators would automatically overrule local ordinances and zoning laws, unless the commission specifically requires compliance.
While this could lower the regulatory hurdles for Summit and other pipeline companies, the lawmakers also added certain protections for counties and landowners. Those include making pipeline companies liable for damages and authorizing counties to collect up to $1 per foot in surcharges from pipeline companies.
Whether that law remains on the books will be up to South Dakota voters this November.
“You vote yes, as if you were a legislator; you want it to go into effect. You vote no if you don't want it,” said Michael Card, professor emeritus of public policy and management at the University of South Dakota.
Card does not expect the ballot issue will be “a slam dunk.”
“If the effort to repeal the law is successful, that is, the no votes exceed the yes votes, none of these protections go into effect,” Card said.
The “firestorm” over CO2 pipelines in South Dakota has splintered traditional alliances while forging new ones, especially over property rights, according to Card. With two out of three ears of corn in South Dakota turned into ethanol, he said farmers who vote no in November may look like they’re voting against their bottom line.
“On the other hand, they're clearly voting for their self interest because they believe that this is not a public purpose. This is taking away their property rights, and God, family, farm are three essential values in most of South Dakota politics over the past 125 years,” Card said.
North Dakota permits
Across the border, the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources is reviewing Summit’s application for underground storage permits. The agency is expected to make a recommendation in the fall to the North Dakota Industrial Commission, which includes the governor.
During a hearing in June, Summit Executive Vice President Wade Boeshans talked about the connections between this project and sustainable aviation fuel. Airlines used an estimated 158 million gallons last year. The industry’s goal is to grow to 3 billion gallons per year by 2030.
“This is a significant opportunity for the corn producers and by extension the corn markets, which has a material impact on land prices and commodity prices,” Boeshans said.
He also said Summit’s pipeline project “provides an opportunity for these plants to capture their CO2, lower their [carbon intensity] score and transport their CO2 to a suitable storage basin here in North Dakota.”
Kurt Swenson’s ranch sits on top of the geological formation where Summit wants to sequester carbon underground. When a neighbor working as a land agent for Summit approached his family three years ago, Swenson said they were open-minded about leasing the pore space.
They’ve been approached by other developers, including wind and solar.
But as they learned more about the project, Swenson said his family had concerns about safety and environmental risks, especially to the aquifer that provides drinking water. Swenson said there were also red flags with the terms and conditions in the lease.
The biggest issue for Swenson, though, is a state law that makes it easier for companies to use underground pore space, even if a landowner doesn’t agree to it.
“And so when we learned that, that really didn't sit very well with us in the family, that somebody could forcibly take our private property from us, and so then we started to really get much more involved,” Swenson said.
Swenson sits on the board of the Northwest Landowners Association, which is suing North Dakota over the state’s pore space laws. One of the arguments is that by using a different legal term, “amalgamation” rather than “eminent domain,” landowners don’t get to request a hearing in front of a judge or have compensation determined by a jury.
“Ultimately, we will not let this project of sequestration move forward with Summit until they treat landowners in a constitutional manner the way that they deserve to be treated,” Swenson said.
Troy Coons, chairman of the association, said he expects a ruling in the coming weeks and that the case will likely go to the North Dakota Supreme Court.
Opponents and proponents of the pipeline are also waiting on a decision from the North Dakota Public Service Commission about Summit’s route permit. The company made some changes and reapplied after the commission denied the first application in 2023.
Moving into the courts
Stretches of the pipeline still must be approved in Minnesota, Nebraska and Iowa.
The process in Minnesota is moving toward the final stage for one 28-mile leg in the west-central part of the state. In Nebraska, where no state-wide approval is required, Summit will need conditional use permits from each county with a zoning ordinance. The company needs a second permit in Iowa for an expanded route with public hearings in 23 counties set for August and September.
Yet lawsuits could pose the biggest challenge, even in Iowa, where Summit is headquartered and where more than half of the ethanol plants signed onto the project are located.
“Here in Iowa, we've definitely moved on to the next phases as part of this process, which is starting to move out of those administrative agencies and into, most likely into the courts,” said Jennifer Zwagerman, director of the Drake Agricultural Law Center in Des Moines.
Suits over the first permit are expected to be filed in the coming months, and a case in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals could determine whether Iowa counties can enforce setback ordinances for pipelines.
Another case pending in the Supreme Court of Iowa challenges the constitutionality of the state’s survey law.
Shannon Roesler, a law professor at the University of Iowa, said the opposition around large-scale carbon capture and sequestration projects is part of a larger trend.
“Tax credits that are providing [these] incentives to do this now, were part of landmark climate legislation, along with a lot of other things, that people in local communities didn't really deliberate,” said Roesler. “So it looks like, suddenly private companies are showing up, and they want to use these subsidies. And people really don't feel like they had a say in it.”
Roesler cited the proposed Grain Belt Express, a nearly 800-mile transmission line that would carry wind energy from Kansas across parts of Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. It also faces resistance from landowners over property rights.
Whether or not Summit’s ambitious project is built as envisioned, pipelines already crisscross the country with even more being proposed. Blank cited the roughly 3.3 million miles of on-shore pipelines transporting natural gas, crude oil, and other hazardous liquids in the U.S.
“Pipelines are moving commodities under our feet every day. We don't know they're there. We don't hear about them,” Blank said. “It is the safest mode of transportation for commodities that the U.S. has, really that the world has.”
This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.
