By Rick Callahan
The Associated Press

STANFORD, Ind. - Lisa Swoape's 42-acre slice of southern Indiana's hill country nurtures a tiny oasis - a spring-fed pond lined with reeds and frequented by blue herons, songbirds and other wildlife.

It's an idyllic setting Ms. Swoape has enjoyed for 23 years from her farmhouse overlooking the rolling countryside southwest of Bloomington.

Now, however, Ms. Swoape's land faces an uncertain future, sitting as it does in the path of one of five possible routes for a long-planned extension of Interstate 69 from Indianapolis to Evansville.

She fears that when the state announces the highway's route early this year, a dotted line will be drawn through her hills and hollows, which would be blasted aside and filled in to make way for the new road.

"The idea of taking God's green Earth and these back country homes and farms, it's so sad. They'll just take my land and my house, build a highway and no one will even know it was there," said Ms. Swoape, who raised three children on her rural homestead.

Southern Indiana residents like Ms. Swoape whose property sits in the path of one of the five routes don't just fear losing their land, or the gurgling, moss-lined springs and outcroppings that grace many hollows.

They also don't want the rural quiet disturbed by bulldozers, explosions and, eventually, the roar of traffic.

More troubling for environmentalists is the damage the highway could cause to the limestone labyrinth that underlies large portions of southwestern Indiana. Called karst geology, these caves, sinkholes, springs and other features formed over millions of years as water dissolved rock that was once the floor of an ancient ocean.

If the highway is built through karst areas, road salt, oil, antifreeze and anything else that leaks or is spilled on the roadway would inevitably be washed into this subterranean network, posing a threat to groundwater that ends up in many residents' well-water, said Andy Knott of the Hoosier Environmental Council.

His group had advocated an alternate route for highway extension that would use upgraded sections of U.S. 41 and Interstate 70 - a route rejected by the Indiana Department of Transportation.

Mr. Knott said although the alternate route would have had no impact on karst regions, that isn't the case for all five finalist routes chosen by INDOT. He worries that the project will destroy caves the endangered Indiana bat uses for its winter hibernation. Blind cave fish and other sensitive species also live the area's caves, he said.

"If you blast through caves, sinkholes and springs, you destroy habitat. There's no way around that," Mr. Knott said. "This project could have a terrible impact on the ecosystem."

State Transportation Commissioner J. Bryan Nicol said the state hopes to avoid karst areas in whatever route is chosen, and would try to minimize environmental harm along the project's route.

He and other state officials have said all five of the finalist routes, which range in cost from about $1 billion to $1.8 billion, would shorten the travel time between Evansville and Indianapolis and provide economic growth to communities along its path.

But from the outset the project garnered strong opposition in some of the areas where the proposed routes would traverse.

That sentiment is particularly evident along the undulating roads near the town of Stanford in rural southwestern Monroe County, where signs declaring "Stop I-69!" dot front lawns.

One of those lawns is that of Tom Tokarski, who has been campaigning against the I-69 extension for more than a decade with his wife, Sandra. Together, they helped form the anti-I-69 group Citizens for Appropriate Rural Roads.

In November, Mr. Tokarski delivered about 138,000 signatures the group collected from residents opposed to the highway to the Statehouse office of Gov. Frank O'Bannon, who will make the final decision on the route.

He believes state officials, who had planned to announce the route by the end of 2002, are confused about which one to choose.

"In a sense it would be good to find out one way other or another, but I have a sense that they're in big trouble, that they're not going to find a good route for this that's going to work," he said.

Mr. Tokarski and others also maintain that the state's final environmental impact statement on the five proposed routes missed dozens of caves in western Monroe County and eastern Greene County.

Mr. Nicol said those claims are dead wrong. The state made it clear throughout the route selection process, he said, that it would not identify the precise location of caves to protect them from vandals.

Sam Frushour, who heads the Indiana Geological Service's field services section, said building a highway through karst topography is far more expensive than building on the loam and glacial till that covers much of the state.

"The limestone region is a bit tenuous for any major type of construction," he said. "You've got drainage problems right off, the potential of sinking pavement. It really is very expensive. ... That's one of the reasons this thing hasn't been built."