Horse Creek is a little-known, small and wonderful stream, with headwaters located in the so-called "four corners," the place where Hillsborough, Hardee, Manatee and Polk counties meet.

The creek meanders almost 40 miles through several counties to meet the Peace River. Most of its length, the creek is shaded by tall, twisted oaks draped with resurrection fern and Spanish moss. Except for a short, ditched portion, Horse Creek twists and turns in a natural scenic path. While at places it is unexpectedly wide, upstream in normal waters you could wade across it, and near the Peace a child could toss a stone to the other side. Its waters are usually clear and shallow, and swimming fishes are easily seen contrasted with the sandy bottom.

It is quiet along Horse Creek, except for the buzz of the insects, the call of the birds, and the wind going through the oaks. Largely rural, the land along its banks is like most of Florida was 50 years ago, before humans swamped the Sunshine State. Large lines of bobwhite quail pass through pastures and back yards and call out loudly at night. Deer wander down to the creek to drink, where otters play and wading birds fish. At night, the stars are revealed above the creek without sky glow, the incoming burn of a meteorite is easily spotted, and there are no emergency sirens raging as ambulances and police swarm about the city. There is just the quietude of a bubbling stream.

While most Floridians have never heard of Horse Creek, it is the center of a raging human controversy, which will determine the future of phosphate mining in Florida. Permitting of three phosphate mines in Manatee and Hardee counties has been inching its way through the permitting process, in one case for almost five years.

People who care about Horse Creek are worried about the possible effects of phosphate mining around it. Potential spills from clay settling areas, created in the process of separating phosphate from the earth, could wash down it. Mining could create potential changes in hydrology. Farther downstream, Charlotte County is worried about the impact on its rich estuary, Charlotte Harbor.

There is much going on you can't see, whispered about and defined by the word arbitration. There are legal hearings in progress. Not privy to the arbitration, one can only hope for the best.

Both sides have been spinning their own story. If one side said white, the other said not so dark. Both true statements, but the spin is harder to unravel.

Currently, 107,000 acres in Hardee County are owned, leased, or optioned by the phosphate industry for mining. This is about one-quarter of the county. Additional acres lie in DeSoto County.

With those combined acres, the phosphate industry has a long profitable future in Florida. Without them, time is running out on Florida land economical to mine. Some company clocks are ticking quicker.

Hardee County's newly created mining department thinks more land is at stake. They project as much as 160,000-plus acres might eventually be mined, a third of their county. The industry says that's too big a number. Some land is regulated wetlands, they say; other areas are set aside for wildlife corridors. Opponents want the number high. The industry wants the number low. Both are telling the truth, based on certain assumptions. Which assumptions will turn out to be true? Only time and permitting will tell. Or maybe, arbitration and legal hearings.

Whomever you listen to, it's a lot of land.CulpabilityBefore a writer weaves words affecting an industry which directly employs more than 7,000 Floridians and affects the health of our environment, readers have a right to know something about him. Thus I vet myself as someone who owns mining stocks, and who as a published writer and photographer has helped to destroy trees while inadvertently encouraging the use of messy chemicals, in producing both film and paper.

For 17 years I was in business, selling people things they didn't need at a price they couldn't afford. When my father died in 1995, I drove to California and became a tree hugger. Somewhere there is a photo of me with my arms around a redwood, planting a firm kiss. Before the business, I was in the Army a spell, including a tour in Vietnam, which turned me from a Goldwater conservative into a McGovern liberal, putting me on the receiving end of two of the largest and most diametrically opposed presidential landslides in history.

Since 1995, I have been on a probationary period of on-the-job training with Florida. I have hiked its trails, biked its paths, paddled its rivers and coasts, slept on it, and written three books about La Florida. I have edited other books on Florida's spiders, insects and fishes, and am guilty of a number of articles glutting Florida magazines. I like my work, it is what I was always meant to do, and I hope it is of value to others. The most important thing to me is not to say anything that is incorrect. When my father died, I decided it was time to do what I wanted, to make up for a large waste of my time in the short space of life left.

Elsewhere I have written that the greatest gift my parents gave me was a life in Florida. I grew up in Pinellas County, where my father was a builder of homes. How could anyone not love a state with such beautiful beaches and so much natural splendor? As a child I was mesmerized by Florida. I have lived in Europe and Asia. I have pretty much been around the world. Florida is my part of it.

In this sense then, I have always been concerned and interested in the phosphate industry, because loving Florida I have been aware of the industry's accidents, including one in 1997 on the Alafia River, the aftermath of which struck very close to home. Having a degree in sociology (not mining, ecology or biology), I first wanted to meet some people who lived along the stream. To me, understanding the issue of mining around Horse Creek involves the feelings of humans who live there.People Along the CreekBlue-eyed, gray-haired and becoming slightly forgetful, Bob Kelly lives in his solar-powered house on stilts beside Horse Creek. In times of heavy rainfall, he sometimes paddles to his home in a canoe.

This former South Florida salesman once led Sierra Club paddling trips about Florida and into the Okefenokee Swamp. He fondly remembers paddling his wife out to camp on Fakahatchee Island. Once a scoutmaster, Bob sends kids off to school mornings and greets them at the bus stop afternoons. He is everything a good neighbor should be. While we were visiting on Bob's porch, an otter caught a fish below us in the creek. "Sometimes," Bob said, "the otters go up onto that sand bank across from us and fight. You wouldn't believe it."

I asked Bob about phosphate mining near Horse Creek. "I don't want it," he said. "Everything will change, and it will never be the same."

Each day when nearby Solomon's Castle is open, Bob eats lunch in the "Boat-in-the-Moat," a full-size replica of a pirate ship where visitors are served by Alane, daughter of Howard, the creator of Solomon's Castle, a man whose art, often made of junk, is full of wit, wisdom and whimsy.

Alane's teenage son Cole says wildlife is plentiful around the river. His friends had fawns, which slept in-house on pillows. Cole has raised raccoon and possum and recently came into possession of three piglets. He has captured and released over 20 different kinds of snakes. Once Alane's daughter came to her saying duct tape was needed. "What for?" Alane asked. "To tie an alligator's jaws shut." "What alligator?" she asked. The one under Cole.

People along the creek worry about the effect of mining on wildlife. Restoration of mined lands has been required by law since 1975. When the land is restored, the industry says wildlife comes back.

Not exactly so, one scientist at Archbold Biological Station told me, since the hard-to-see, little organisms often do not come back -- small plants, insects, arachnids. Perhaps not as much wildlife returns as was once there. There is difference of opinion about how gopher tortoises fare.

"The land along Horse Creek is mostly ditched pasture land," one industry spokesman said. The habitat to be created by restoration, in his opinion, would be more valuable. Which is more valuable is a human judgment, of course.

Some people along the creek are engaged in cattle ranching. Alvin English's family came to the area in the early 1900s. His family ranched and owned a spread. Now Alvin works cattle at a nearby University of Florida agricultural research station.

When Alvin drives his truck out from his own several acres, he looks to the north side of the road where the Farmland Tract begins. No permit has been filed to mine this tract -- yet. According to Alvin, it is also where the walls of a clay settling area were planned under the previous mining company. If so, Alvin might look east one day and see the walls, rising as high perhaps as 80 feet, from his house.

The English's well is less than 20 feet deep. The nearby matrix -- the layer of earth in which phosphate is found -- may be 70 feet deep. "There are a lot of little streams out there," Alvin says. "You can't tell me you can dig around here and not change things."

"You people in Tampa," Alvin said, standing up, facing toward metropolis, and putting his hand over his eyes like a scout staring at a distant horizon, "are looking west." He was thinking about oil drilling in the Gulf. "You need to look east," he said, changing direction and referring to Horse Creek.

Other folks along the creek picked the location for a different kind of alternative lifestyle. Dennis and Julia Mader practice holistic healing on a 25-acre plot where visitors can listen to the quiet trickle of Horse Creek. Therapy includes massage and vegetarian diet, as well as meditation by the stream.

Dennis, who grew up in Lakeland, remembers swimming in reclaimed phosphate lakes. Dennis started Hardee County Citizens Against Pollution, which opposes mining. He sees resulting radiation and pollution as a health threat. The industry says studies do not support those conclusions.

Dennis and I were born the same year, but he looks about 20 years younger. He obviously knows something I don't about health and taking care of yourself. There are a great number of studies claiming health risks from phosphate mining, and other studies that argue the opposite.

"Have you heard Bill Byle speak yet?" Dennis Mader asked me.

More than 30 organizations are opposed to mining along Horse Creek, all with their own spokesperson. Not one, however seems to have drawn the heat like Bill Byle. Charlotte County hired him to address their down-stream concerns for Charlotte Harbor.

ControversyAt a Bradenton League of Women Voters meeting, Bill spoke. A fourth generation Cracker, his grandmother was born in 1890 in Bartow, heart of the phosphate industry; his grandfather was a Fort Myers doctor. Bill joked there were broken-down pick-up trucks in his front yard. Bill was a school teacher first, then owned an environmental consulting company before going to work for the county.

Gray Gordon, a 32-year veteran of the phosphate industry, thinks Bill is "using scare tactics" and "about 10 percent of what he says is true."

Gray and others from Cargill Industries were on hand when Bill spoke in Bradenton. They claimed they asked to speak and were not allowed. They said the meeting was rigged so they could not ask questions. It is Bill's recollection that at the end of his talk he asked if there were additional questions, and the Cargill folks didn't ask any.

Even in the case of a small public meeting's conduct, there was dispute and distrust.

Among the documents Bill offered everyone in attendance was a U.S. Geological Survey concluding that phosphate mining had reduced water from the Peace River reaching Charlotte Harbor. In part, the report said sinkholes opened in the river because of mining and springs stopped flowing.

Gray Gordon mentioned another study conducted by Ardaman and Ardaman, a well-respected geo-tech firm. This study says water levels declined, but blames that largely on rainfall. It points out that agriculture and drinking water take more water from the Peace than mining. Opponents say mining diminishes water reaching the river by altering the surface and ground flow, which neither agribusiness nor drinking water does.

The industry says the USGS study is flawed because it deals only with clay settling areas (CSAs). Opponents say Ardaman's study is flawed because it depends on an abstract model, which may have nothing to do with reality.

Here is a lesson learned. The difficulty of knowing what is true and false increases exponentially as more and more studies are given out.

Assuming less fresh water reaches Charlotte Harbor, it could change the nature of one of Florida's most productive estuaries.

A final question for Bill at the meeting was: could he say anything positive about phosphate mining? He struggled and could not.

Gray Gordon said, "He could have said everything we ate at the luncheon before the meeting was grown because of mining."

Other IssuesFor Hardee County, the overriding issue might be how much of its sub-surface it would care to have turned into clay from clay settling areas? Once turned into clay, what can the land be used for? The industry has provided many examples of what can be grown on top of the clay. Skeptics think many of the uses cost too much to be practical.

How much of the county would go into clay? To complicate the math, one of the mining companies intends to truck clay into nearby Polk County to settle in existing pits. Others don't intend to mine all the acres held. I have heard figures from 27,000 to 80,000 acres. You can probably guess which figures came from industry and which from opponents. Hardee County planners think it will be 40,000-plus acres of clay if 107,000 acres are mined.

Anyway, a whole bunch of clay.

Clay spills fouled the Peace and Alafia rivers for years. At normal water levels, Horse Creek does not have the width or depth of those rivers. Sometimes Horse Creek is a trickle.

Standing on a clay settling area's broad walls, on which trucks drive, it is difficult to imagine a breach. But in the past, CSAs have burst.

Before World War II, the clay was even dumped into rivers. Everything was. Later, and until regulation of the industry in 1975, there were a lot of CSA spills. Since regulation, breaches reduced drastically.

Gray Gordon indicated that Hardee County could require extra dams and locating of CSAs away from the creek.

For Sarasota and Manatee counties, the issue is drinking water, which comes directly out of Horse Creek, according to Bill Byle. Opponents worry about reagents and radioactivity. Industry spokesman say their water complies with applicable freshwater standards.

Hillsborough, Manatee and Pinellas counties have different issues. Phosphogypsum stacks -- a byproduct of turning phosphate into fertilizer -- lie along Tampa Bay or its rivers. At least two stacks are active along Tampa Bay, and there have been past spills into the Alafia, which flows into it. There are no plans to build additional fertilizer processing plants along Horse Creek, thus Horse Creek is not threatened by a gyp stack spill. But Tampa Bay is.

Phosphogypsum has no present use. The Environmental Protection Agency banned it from road building in the 1990s. Industry folks think this was a little picky. The reasoning was if roads were later taken up and the gyp base used for housing, there might be radon gas in such homes.

While a stack is active, there is a lake of phosphoric acid water on top, approaching a billion gallons. A phosphogypsum stack at Piney Point threatens to spill into Tampa Bay. Plans have been approved to dump 500-million gallons of it into the Gulf, out of fear the stack might collapse with heavy rains and decimate Tampa Bay. This water is from a leftover stack from Mulberry Phosphates.

The specter of Mulberry Phosphate looms over the industry.

Big BusinessIn 1997, a phosphoric acid plume from a Mulberry Phosphate stack poured into the Alafia River and wiped out small life for miles. Dead fish and birds littered the river. Smaller things that lived in the bottom or banks died without notice (except to them).

It was a terrible thing to see.

After promising to fix the devastation from this spill, Mulberry Phosphate went out of business. Mulberry Phosphate's stacks are being shut down. The severance tax on phosphate is being used to pay for it.

The four remaining companies making fertilizer, now spun as plant food, say it is unfair to taint them with the Mulberry Phosphate brush.

It is. And it isn't.

Mining advocates are led by people like Gray Gordon, who qualifies as class-A socially responsible in my book. Phosphate employees are as hard working and conscientious as any others. Among generous acts, Cargill leases islands in Tampa Bay to Audubon and Lithia Springs to the county for one dollar a year.

However, no one can guarantee there will not be additional accidents. The industry doesn't want them, of course. They cost money and cause bad publicity for an industry that gets a lot of bad publicity anyway.

But businesses go in and out of existence, life spans determined by their nature, ownership, management and economic winds. No matter how unlikely, another spill from a company going out of business and unable to foot the bill can't be entirely ruled out.

The industry says one answer is more wads of insurance. Some opponents say the answer is to stop mining. Others offer compromises with more regulation and monitoring.

At present, it is hard to imagine the companies involved going out of business. Cargill is a very large company. It has 75,000 employees, about 5,000 in Florida, not all in mining. Its sales and assets number billions of dollars. Cargill got into the Florida phosphate business by buying Gardinier and Seminole Phosphate.

Hardee County has fewer than 30,000 residents and a much smaller budget. Cargill's headquarters is in Minnesota. Hardee County's is in Wauchula. There are a lot of Floridians who don't even know where Wauchula is.

Gray Gordon provided a tour of Cargill's mine at Hookers Prairie, at the southern headwaters of the Alafia River in Polk County, where we went out on an active dragline. Gray took me on both an active and inactive gypsum stack near the mouth of the Alafia at U.S. 41. He answered all questions asked, as have representatives of the other mining companies. In my opinion, they have not lied, nor has Bill Byle, but everyone has told their side of the story, which differs.

To the industry, phosphate is needed to feed Americans and the world. The industry believes it does all it can to prevent accidents and reduce health risks, which its leaders believe are overstated. If there are accidents, they are an unfortunate side effect of producing food.

Opponents are skeptical. They're certainly in favor of feeding people who need food, but not so convinced the potential consequences for Florida are worth it. Some people believe in alternative farming, without such a heavy reliance on fertilizer.

Once there were maybe 200 phosphate-mining companies in Florida. Now there are three. Besides Cargill, there is IMC Phosphates, a publicly traded company that began in Tennessee, and CF Industries, owned by eight midwestern farm co-ops.

CF Industries is a much smaller company than Cargill or IMC, with less than 1,000 employees in Florida. Its rock and fertilizer stays in the U.S. IMC is a billion-dollar operation and the largest phosphate mining company in the world. Cargill, a more diversified company, is even bigger than IMC

According to stock analyst's reports, 54 percent of what IMC mines is exported. Cargill exports too.

Another company in the industry, U.S. Agrichem, does not mine. It buys rock from IMC and makes fertilizer. Despite its name, it is Chinese owned, the parent company called Sinochem. It has a contract to buy rock until 2024 from IMC.

Opponents emphasize that "Communist China" is where much of the phosphate-turned-fertilizer is headed. The industry makes a point of using the full name, the People's Republic of China.

Industry spokesmen say they are in business to make a profit. We are not at war with China. There is no embargo. People there need to eat too.

So does phosphate feed the world?

No, but it feeds a lot of it indirectly.

When I go to the store, I buy that expensive stuff labeled organic. It is not made with fertilizer. Usually a first crop is burned and plowed under to nourish the food crop. Like early Native Americans, organic farmers are burning off the land to grow crops. That means growing two crops to produce one. That's why it's more expensive.

Most sources say that phosphate doubles the crop yield, while others feel the ag industry is addicted to phosphate and over-fertilizes.

Immense Works of ManIn order to get at the phosphate nodules, which were deposited when Florida was underwater eons ago, it is necessary to scrape off the layer of earth above them. In industry jargon, this layer is called the "overburden," land we walk and live on, and later are buried in. Florida overburden can vary from 20 to 70 feet below our Nikes.

Beneath overburden lies the "matrix" -- not a world where Keanu Reeves dodges bullets or runs up walls. The matrix is where the phosphate is located -- the Mother Lode. Mining of any type is intrusive. Phosphate is strip-mined. Less intrusive techniques apparently don't work in Florida.

Towering draglines scrape away at the matrix using giant buckets. Two of my Hondas would fit in a bucket.

The hugeness of a dragline, when seen at a distance, is not diminished up close and personal. There are several levels of housings where gears turn, electricity surges and machines run. Each level is as big as my house.

Operating the dragline was a man who deftly manipulated this enormous machine with touches of his fingers. He had worked for the phosphate industry since 1964, likely raised a family and sent kids to school while Gray and I were in the armed forces, college, business, and Bill was a teacher, consultant and county employee.

Behind the dragline, two working guys in overalls operated a powerful water-jet. The matrix was being slurried to be piped off for separation.

Phosphate is separated from the sand and clay in a large, specialized building. The sand is used in reclamation, sometimes in conjunction with the clay settling areas. When the settling area is full or no longer needed, the water is drawn off, the clay topped with sand and soil, and restoration starts.

In other areas of Hookers Prairie, enthusiastic, bright-eyed folks were at work planting saw grass. The woman in charge of these efforts had worked at the Smithsonian, been a schoolteacher, and now felt rewarded by bringing something living out of land which had been scraped clean, mined and turned upside down.

About 1,000 acres of saw grass marsh has been planted at Hookers Prairie as part of land restoration. In the minds of Cargill's workers, it's an improvement over the tangled, shrub-dominated prairie that preceded it, but that's another value judgment.

Mined phosphate gets loaded onto trains to be sent to the fertilizer plant, maybe the one by the Alafia River, beside Tampa Bay. At the plant, sulfuric acid is added to the phosphate; fertilizer and phosphogypsum are produced.

Fertilizer is shipped out of Tampa (50-60 percent of the port's business), and leftover gypsum is stacked in pyramid-like structures, so big a base may be 400 acres. When mankind is gone and an alien archeologist arrives, it will be as puzzled by these pyramids as it will be by the giant rodent statue in Orlando.

In human terms, gypsum stacks are long-lived.

Raised lands from clay settling areas and gyp stacks dominate some vistas along roads like State Roads 37 and 39. From a helicopter, they are the most prevalent feature of Central Florida.

How vast the works of man. How vast the scale of his accidents.

Since regulation in 1975, there have been at least nine accidents of such magnitude reported in the popular press. Is all this human activity and environmental threat worth it?

That depends on whom you ask. This is a value judgment. Bill and Gray make different judgments supported by conflicting studies and opinions.

Unfortunately, the people who should make this value judgment, the people of Florida, aren't really involved in the argument.

DemocracyOn the morning of April 15, having the entire night to ponder a compromise between Charlotte County and IMC over a portion of a small mining tract, I clicked on my icon for the story you are reading, and started it across my desktop toward the trash bin. I was becoming disheartened and depressed.

Why?

An arbitration process, whispered about and known only to a few, had just resulted in a small compromise in a big battle. Five hundred acres in Manatee County would be mined. Water would be monitored. If water quality decreased, mining would be stopped. It was a victory, some said, for Charlotte County. I could pick it apart, but I won't. Maybe it will work. Give it a chance.

After all, the other counties that opposed mining around Horse Creek -- Lee, Manatee and Sarasota -- had dropped opposition to the small mine in Manatee. They said they could then concentrate on opposing mining of a much larger tract in Hardee County.

Still, I had the sinking feeling this was the first in a series of small compromises, where decisions would be made for the voiceless in the name of common sense, goodwill and for citizens who weren't there.

What is the sense of a journalist making an exploration and writing an article if the decisions are not made by potential readers, but by arbitrators and officials in a far off county?

About halfway across the desktop, I lifted my finger and wondered how I would explain dropping the story to my editor.

"Spills are bad, Jim, I am certain of that, but I am not smart enough to sort out issues about radiation, restoration and hydrology. Looks worrisome to me, but I am not a physicist or geologist. More than that, I get the feeling some nice people might get disappointed before this is over. And I've become emotionally involved because I think the people of the state are not being consulted or proportionately represented."

Here's what I believe: Whether mining should occur is a value judgment. It should not be up to the mining companies, a handful of administrators, arbitrators and a few county commissioners -- but to all the citizens of Florida. After all, it is their state that is being torn up and altered in vast chunks, and their Gulf and rivers into which things are being spilled.

When a mining application is given to Hardee County, officials there must do certain things with it and then pass it along to the Central Florida Regional Planning Council. From there it goes to the state Department of Environmental Protection, the Bureau of Mine Reclamation, the water management district, the Department of Community Affairs, the Corps of Engineers, and sometimes other counties. In the end, and sometimes years later, the county commission where mining takes place votes yes or no.

Current permitting includes more public input than old permitting did. One retired mining executive told me of the days when the only permit he needed was one for the septic tank near the office. Still, permitting is a far cry from a democratic process in which the people of Florida have a voice.

The icon containing this story got pretty close to the trash bin. Then I decided maybe the compromise in Charlotte County wasn't the beginning of the end. Maybe it was reasonable, and an effective way of showing cooperation leading to better settlements. I am hoping that's true. I am hoping people will look into the issues themselves and reach their own conclusions. I am also hoping for a more open, democratic process. That's a lot of hope, but it is also the reason why the icon stayed out of the trash bin.

But I'm not holding my breath.

Tim Ohr is the author of Florida's Fabulous Natural Places, among other books. He is the editor of many titles in the Florida's Fabulous nature series and a frequent contributor to regional magazines. He is currently at work on a book about the Okefenokee Swamp, and his Florida's Fabulous Canoe and Kayak Guide is scheduled for publication in June.

Major Phosphate Accidents since 1975

1980 Agrico: Clay settling area spill dumps 12-million gallons into the Peace River.1988 Gardinier: Phosphoric acid spill at the mouth of the Alafia River.1989 Big Four Mine: Release of waters from clay settling area in Polk County.1990 Gardinier: 250,000 gallons of waters from clay settling area into the Peace River.1993 Cargill: Fertilizer plant in Gibsonton spills acidic water into Archie Creek.1994 IMC-Agrico: Phosphogypsum stack drops through a sinkhole.1994 Cargill: 20-million gallons of water from a sand- tailing pit go into the Peace River.1994 IMC-Agrico: A half-billion gallons of water from a clay settling area floods Keysville area in Hillsborough County.1997 Mulberry Phosphates: 54-million gallons from a gyp stack dump into the Alafia.