The story of the Hume family in Peetz, Colorado, is being repeated all over the country. Amidst the daily labors and joys of making a living, raising a family, and steadily pursuing their dreams, an energy corporation came in and turned their lives upside down.

Tallgrass Energy converted the former gas pipeline Trailblazer to carry carbon dioxide (CO₂) — without securing the rights to transport this new substance through the Humes’ property. To make up for the gas once transported by Trailblazer, Tallgrass has also built new gas infrastructure, including a compressor station right across the road from the Humes’ property.

“We received a letter in 2023 about the project,” said Kari Hume, plaintiff in Hume v. Tallgrass Energy and mother of seven. “But it didn’t explain that a new compressor station would be built right next door, nor did it inform us of the hazards.”

The 40-year-old Trailblazer pipeline, which runs a mere 800 feet from their home, now transports hazardous compressed CO₂. Meanwhile, Oil & Gas Watch reports that the compressor station will release up to 12,600 pounds of hazardous air pollutants each year.

The Hume family now finds themselves on the front lines of Big Oil’s biggest boondoggle: carbon capture and storage (CCS). CCS purports to help the climate by capturing CO₂ at polluting facilities and burying it deep underground. In this case, Trailblazer carries captured CO₂ from ethanol plants in Nebraska to underground wells in Wyoming. But the truth is, CCS is a failed technology that greenwashes polluting companies.

The Humes have made the difficult decision to leave their land and the life they’ve built on it. But first, they’re pursuing justice and recompense through legal action. And they’re sharing their story and advocating for policy change so that others can avoid facing the same decision.

In this interview, we sat down with Kari to talk about her family’s experience, the dangers of this infrastructure, and how people facing polluting projects anywhere can fight back. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Can you tell me more about your family’s farmstead? What do you love about the area?

Kari Hume: I came out here to northeast Colorado to start a life with my husband Brady with the intention of dragging him back home to Missouri, and never did. I fell in love with the culture and the landscape here pretty quickly.

From our place, you can see over 40 miles into the distance. Out here, before we had as much industry, a pitch-black night with stars was literally like sitting in an omnimax theater. You can’t even imagine it being that big.

Brady was born and raised in Peetz, Colorado, and in 2005 he bought this land and this farm. It had a little farmhouse and a completely cement barn and cement blacksmith shop; gorgeous and really unique. Brady’s family farmed wheat and raised cattle, and this had the ground to do that.

We truly struggle to trust our food system, as Food & Water Watch can understand. It’s become really important to us to have truly clean food.

We brought in Palisade peaches from western Colorado, and we learned how to properly seed and sprout them to grow them here. We have natural wild plum trees, organic apples, blackberries and raspberries and asparagus. These are the kind of things that take years, that you do with the intention of someday reaping the benefits. But at this point, we’re not going to see the majority of that.

As we were having children, we really wanted to give them the opportunity to build out their own homestead and for us to live collectively. The idea of them having their own space, but us still being together, was kind of our dream.

Kari and Brady Hume outside of their barn. Photo courtesy of the Humes.

How did this infrastructure start encroaching on your land?

KH: In 2022, we were blissfully unaware of anything else happening. But Tallgrass was going to our neighbors. Without any project, they updated their easement with the neighbors to include the transportation of CO₂. Later that year, Tallgrass applied to FERC [the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] for the Trailblazer pipeline conversion, to abandon natural gas for CO₂.

Then Tallgrass requested a subdivision exemption from the County to expand its existing compressor station. This was an old small metal building that sat for years on a property adjacent to us. It’s never made noise, and until then it had one blowdown that we can recall.

There was a 9 a.m. Tuesday meeting in the dead of winter, 40 minutes away in my county seat, for the subdivision exemption. I was heavily pregnant with our sixth child, and we didn’t think much about it — the notice didn’t say anything about new construction or what would happen next — so we didn’t go.

In April of 2024, we started seeing semis pouring in, and by September, they had a whole facility constructed. Around here, you can’t get a house built in two years!

We’re getting concerned, calling the County, asking, “Where are the building permits? Where were the notices for construction?” After digging, we found that there was no building permit. They rezoned the land, and that was it.

How has all this infrastructure impacted your lives?

KH: By the end of 2024, Tallgrass had completely leached the Trailblazer pipeline of natural gas, and we started smelling things. As we’re researching, we’re getting sick from some of the strongest odor releases. And we realize that if there’s any kind of leak or rupture, we’re very close. About half of the year, the wind comes up from that direction.

That time researching uncovered that we were looking at very serious long-term implications, never mind the short-term risk of the natural gas pipeline in our pasture, less than 750 feet from our home. We’re in the impact zone for explosion from the gas pipeline and gas compressor station, as well as in the impact zone for asphyxiation from the CO₂ pipeline.

So we were notifying the company, “You are not to run CO₂ through our land.” Unbeknownst to us, they started running it in September 2025.

In October 2025, the employees came out to the compressor station, and after they left, this thick, sulfuric odor wafted over. We’re getting everyone inside, we’re shutting windows, we’re making sure there are no sparks. Within less than an hour, my septum was swelling, and I got lots of respiratory symptoms. That went on for 10 days while I was pregnant with my seventh child.

It’s one thing for someone to tell you something’s hazardous. It’s another for your body to revolt.

We eventually found out that these reactions match those that you can have in reaction to dangerous impurities in both natural gas and CO₂ pipelines, and oddly enough, there had been five days straight of an alarm at the facility that we caught on video and sent to the company. Obviously something was wrong.

In June 2026, Tallgrass had a loud natural gas release that smelled, and they never notified us. My husband was working. He welds and uses a plasma cutter; he works with open flames. To have an explosive gas in...

Food & Water Watch

Message History

Delivery option(s)