The cargo originates where three states meet, across the river from Ohio's southernmost point, and will flow in West Virginia and Kentucky before 1,200 pounds of pressure blast it across the Buckeye State.

Its destination: Columbus.

The vehicle is an underground, 14-inch diameter steel artery. When completed, the Marathon Ashland Petroleum pipeline pass through eight counties, encountering 175 public roadways, 363 streams and rivers, 53 wetlands and five state forests, parks and preserves.

Spanning 149 miles -- through isolated cornfields and into urban Franklin County -- the project has little across-the-board opposition. But where its 75-foot right-of-way cuts through Hocking County, the pipeline has attracted protests and litigation.

On Tuesday, opponents sued the federal and state governments to block the project, claiming that public officials have ignored threats to the environment.

The oil company said the good outweighs the disruption: The estimated 3.3 million gallons of fuel that can be pumped daily through the line is needed to meet growing demand in central Ohio.

This month, after a four-year legal battle, Marathon Ashland obtained construction permits from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Absent more delays, the pipeline should be finished by spring and operating by summer.

In the beginning

Until Aug. 19, the route was just lines on a map. Now, surveyor's yellow-painted circles and arrows have emerged along roads from South Point to Columbus.

Then construction crews began clearing the wooded areas along the southern border of Lawrence County.

Fifty miles of pipe is stacked in a vacant ethanol plant where construction has begun in South Point. There, the first section of newly laid pipe is buried 8 1/2 feet deep, awaiting connection to the line that will tunnel beneath the Ohio River bed.

Donald Malarky watched as 10 men lowered a 60-foot length into augured trench. As project manager, Malarky will watch the entire process unfold. His workers labor 10 hours a day, six days a week.

"Constructing a pipeline is like an assembly line,'' Malarky shouted over the rumble of the tractors behind him.

To control erosion and plant loss, he said, the crews are told a long list of precautions before they ease the pipeline beneath rivers, streams and wetlands.

Negotiations with the 500 landowners along the way for easements has proved the greatest challenge, said Malarky, who has overseen the project since 1998.

"To build a pipeline you need some room,'' he said.

The job of purchasing the easements is finished, he said, although some opponents contend that a few Hocking County property owners are holding out.

Still, Malarky is proud: The pipeline is the nation's newest and therefore its best, he said.

"There's no reason why people should be concerned about the safety.''

Swamps and state forests

Farther north in Lawrence County, the pipeline will pass through the Wayne National Forest and cross the western corner of Gallia County, where surveyors are marking its path.

At Cackley Swamp, workers will get a break near Oak Hill in southern Jackson County. There, a 50-foot-wide stretch of largely dry land owned by a local coal company will lend itself to the job of navigating the muck.

"It's a pretty large swamp so it's pretty amazing we found that narrow path,'' Malarky said.

Here, trenchers will operate from timber mats for stability. A mile from any houses or farms, the project has attracted little attention -- none negative.

"I don't mind it going through,'' says Keith Hall, a retired construction worker who has laid pipeline himself. "Everybody uses it.'' Even in Wellston, Jackson County, folks are undisturbed. There, the Marathon Ashland trench cuts near the aquifer from which the town draws its water.

"From the info we've received, we don't have any major concerns,'' Mayor John Stabler said. "We understand they're going to be requiring a very tight level of safety on the pipeline.''

Slicing the eastern edge of Richland Furnace State Forest, the line will enter Vinton County. From there, it will run into Hocking County, the center of its opposition.

From Airplane Rock nearly 200 feet above the floor of Hocking State Forest, the oak and hickory-topped ridges and hemlock and beech-bedecked ravines appear to form an unbroken wall of deep green.

Upon closer examination, an unnatural break in the vista's foliage -- a 25-foot easement carrying a buried Columbia Gas line -- emerges. The Marathon Ashland line will parallel that, adding another clear cut of 75 feet: an unforested scar in the eyes of Paul Knoop and Jane Ann Ellis.

They see the stretch as a portal for unwanted flora and fauna in an area that should be guarded and revered for its natural beauty.

Knoop is president of Stop The Ohio Pipeline, the group that joined Ellis in filing the lawsuit Tuesday to bar the route from the scenic and rugged Hocking Hills. Ellis is the owner of the 1,100-acre, state-dedicated Crane Hollow Nature Preserve.

About a third of the 35-mile stretch through Hocking County will be carved through public lands dotted with wetlands, Knoop said. "These areas belong to the people of Ohio -- not the oil company.''

He and Ellis predict environmental catastrophe should a rupture there leave gasoline to leach through the region's porous Black Hand sandstone into its ravines.

In some places, the line will claim giant, 170-year-old trees; in others, it will scale cliffs and descend into ravines, from which bedrock will have to be bored or blasted.

"This will be a disaster waiting to happen,'' Ellis said.

Closer to home

In northern Hocking County, the line cuts through Clear Creek Metro Park and makes its first major turn, northwest through Fairfield and Pickaway counties.

Near the Franklin-Pickaway county line, the pipe will be routed through the Mackey Ford Wildlife Area and then beneath the Scioto River before it will begin a northward run into Franklin County.

Pleasant Corners is little more than a wide spot where London-Groveport Road and Harrisburg Pike intersect west of Grove City. There, the demolition of an old house foreshadows the trench to come.

At the southwest corner of the intersection, 77-year-old Wayne Speakman played a game of rummy outside a convenience store.

"At my age, I don't give (the pipeline) too much thought. Most people don't even know what's going through there, although they noticed the house going down,'' he said.

Next in line, Pleasant and Prarie townships, where the trench will run west of Holt Road and then will jog east along Georgesville Road to I-270. From there, it will run north along the west side of the Outerbelt to Broad Street. There, it will cross I-270, then will continue follow the freeway on its way east.

Near Fisher Road, the home stretch will extend east into Marathon Ashland Petroleum's complex of storage tanks, ending in a gritty, industrialized neighborhood much like where it began.

Few live nearby. No one to cheer, complain or even shrug a shoulder.

But the conflict that echoes from the south follows the pipeline into Franklin County.

The more than $50 million project will ensure, proponents say, cheaper prices at the gas pump and readier access to fuel in a region exploding with demand. Opponents say the ultimate price could be one of tainted beauty and contamination.

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