North Manchester, Indiana – A fired-up group of residents has launched the Wabash County Environmental Protection Alliance to block POET Biorefining’s carbon capture project, as the company drags county officials to federal court over a permit blockade.

The fight is personal. Families worry that miles of high-pressure CO2 pipelines and injection wells could threaten their drinking water, lower property values, and put homes in the path of a potential rupture. Tuesday night’s packed community meeting showed the depth of local anger.

“The community doesn’t like it, we don’t want it here, and we’ll do everything we can to make it leave,” said Josh Leffel, the North Manchester father leading the charge.

Out-of-State Lawyer Brings Battle-Tested Advice

Residents brought in Derrick Braaten, a North Dakota attorney who has beaten carbon pipeline companies in court for years. Braaten flew in to explain how Hoosier landowners can use the same legal tools that worked up north.

“I got calls from landowners here who heard about our wins in North Dakota,” Braaten told the crowd. “The issues are almost identical.”

He pointed out that vague claims about “federal preemption” have repeatedly failed when companies sue counties over local zoning rules. Braaten called POET’s lawsuit against Wabash County “weak on the merits.”

County Commissioners Side with Residents—for Now

Last year, Wabash County Commissioners voted to halt the project after hearing hours of public testimony. POET quickly filed suit in federal court, claiming the county has no authority to interfere with a federally regulated pipeline.

That move backfired politically. Instead of folding, commissioners have stood firm, earning praise from residents who feel abandoned in other pipeline fights across the Midwest.

“We’re reminded every day how lucky we are to have commissioners who actually listen,” Leffel said.

Why Locals Say Carbon Capture Is Too Risky Here

Residents laid out a list of hard concerns:

• • • CO2 pipelines carry gas at 2,200 psi; a rupture in Satartia, Mississippi in 2020 hospitalized 45 people and forced hundreds to flee by car (many passed out at the wheel from oxygen displacement).
    • Proposed injection wells would store CO2 permanently under farmland; leaks could acidify soil and groundwater.
    • Eminent domain would let a private company seize land for profit, not public use.
    • Ethanol plants get massive federal tax credits (45Z) for capturing carbon, meaning taxpayers subsidize the risk.

One woman held up a photo of her grandchildren playing in the yard that sits less than 1,000 feet from the proposed pipeline route. The room went quiet.

Broader Midwest Backlash Grows Louder

Wabash County is now part of a chain reaction. Dozens of counties in Iowa, Illinois, South Dakota, and North Dakota have passed setbacks, moratoriums, or outright bans. Two major pipeline projects—Navigator and Summit—collapsed entirely under public pressure in 2023 and 2024.

Yet POET and its partners keep pushing, arguing carbon capture is essential to meet renewable fuel standards and keep ethanol competitive.

Critics call it greenwashing. Ethanol already uses more energy than it produces when you count farming, distilling, and transport, they say, and permanent underground storage has never been proven at this scale.

A Small Town Decides Its Future

As the federal lawsuit moves forward, residents are organizing door-to-door, packing every county meeting, and raising money for their own legal defense fund.

They know the odds are long. But after watching neighboring states lose land and safety to the same industry, they refuse to back down.

This is more than a pipeline fight. It’s about whether a rural community still gets to decide what happens in its own backyard—or whether billions in federal subsidies will steamroll the people who live there.

What do you think? Should local families have the final say over projects like this, or is carbon capture too important to let counties stand in the way? Drop your thoughts below.