The bitter fight to stop a 2,000-mile carbon pipeline

Sherri Webb on the farm that has been in her family for over a century. She is fighting a proposed pipeline that would be buried under her land. Photograph: Danny Wilcox Frazier/The Guardian

In August 2021, Sherri Webb found a letter in her mailbox about a new pipeline project. It would be a climate solution, the letter from Summit Carbon Solutions read, capturing planet-warming carbon dioxide and pumping it out of the state to be stored deep underground.

The letter included an aerial map of Webb’s property and a word that immediately alarmed her: “easement”. To install the pipeline, planned to run underneath close to 2,000 miles of Iowa land, Summit wanted permission to dig underneath her farm, an 80-acre property near Shelby that has been in Webb’s family for over 100 years.