Industry, Polk County achieve solid relationship
POLK COUNTY -- A Bartow city park at the corner of Broadway and Main Street leaves one with no doubt about the role phosphate has played in the development of the city and the rest of Polk County.
A half-circle of pillars in Blount Park commemorates the people and historical events that shaped the county and its communities. One pillar is dedicated to the phosphate industry.
"Bartow, Polk County and phosphate are synonymous," one of the pillars' bronze plaques states. "Woven into the fiber of this community are the lives and the families of the phosphate workers that call Polk their home and have made phosphate their career."
And walking down Main Street in Bartow leaves no doubt how ingrained phosphate is in the consciousness and lives of its residents.
"You want to know how important phosphate is?" Ken Wetherington said, pointing to his wife's country gift shop, Apple Seeds, on Bartow's historic Main Street. "When phosphate had a layoff, sales dropped 10 percent."
Wetherington, 66, made a 38-year career working in the phosphate industry. Four years ago, he said he retired as the head of IMC's Rainbow Division that sold mixed fertilizers. His career -- for his generation -- wasn't unusual.
"When I was kid, 80 percent of those who didn't go to college worked for the phosphate or phosphate-related industries," Wetherington said. His family has lived in Polk County since 1898. His grandparents made their living from agriculture.
"At one time, it was the No. 1 employer in Polk County," Wetherington said. "All families were tied into phosphate and farming."
Wetherington and others said the phosphate corporations have always been involved in the local communities. He and others cited the Little League ballfields and other parks that the companies donated or helped to develop. One park, south of Bartow, is named for IMC. For Wetherington, that shouldn't surprise anyone.
"Now, like I said, if 80 percent of people were involved in phosphate, and if you asked for donations, where do you think they came from?" he said.
Wages were always above average for workers in Florida's phosphate industry.
When the minimum hourly wage was still in the single digits and Central Florida saw mostly single-digit hourly wages, Wetherington and others said the phosphate industry was paying $8, $9, $10 or more an hour to its workers. Back in a time when men looked to earn a couple of dollars an hour, Wetherington said his father-in-law brought home $8 an hour.
Wetherington and others see phosphate as needed and especially needed by other nations. The state Institute of Phosphate Research estimates 50 percent of phosphate is exported, with 50 percent of the exports going to China.
The phosphate industry has virtually strip-mined Polk County to the bone and is now looking south along the Peace River to open new mines. Wetherington also knows the fears of those who now see the phosphate industry moving down the Peace River.
"Now, I would lie if I told you I never cussed out regulatory people," Wetherington said. "In my experience from the last 25 years, you will find IMC able to purify water. They will have their breaks in dams -- don't get me wrong -- that's going to happen.
"It is controlling the breaks that won't put pollutants in the water," he said.
That wasn't the case when Wetherington first started in the business. Three miles south of Bartow, long-time residents can recall a natural spring, Kissengen Spring, and popular swimming hole that went bone dry.
Kissengen Spring had been a site of respite for Civil War troops and a gathering place for presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt's political rallies during its heyday. The spring also pumped 20 million gallons per day into the Peace River, which helped the river keep flowing through dry seasons.
But the spring went dry in the 1950s. The U.S. Geological Survey, in a 1998 study, blamed over-pumping from the Floridian aquifer by both mining and the agricultural industry.
"We didn't have the knowledge that we have today," Wetherington said. He described the industry as facing repercussions in the past from serious spills that polluted the Alafia River, which flows west into Tampa Bay.
Wetherington views IMC now as the "No. 1" environmentalist in the phosphate industry.
Reclamation and environmental restrictions were two of the greatest changes Wetherington saw during his career in the phosphate industry.
Wetherington is president of Dream Lakes of Florida, where he and his partners book hunting and fishing trips on more than 600 acres of reclaimed land. He said the site had been called the "VIP pits," a place where IMC would take its guests for largemouth bass fishing and quail hunting.
"You should see this place," he said. "It's all recreational and we're running cattle down the middle of it."
Wetherington also believes the phosphate industry will find a use for the mountains of phosphogypsum waste that line State Road 60 between Bartow and Mulberry.
That use, however, has yet to be discovered.
'Good corporate citizens'
Don't bad mouth phosphate in Bartow.
"All the phosphate companies have been good corporate citizens -- not only financially, but with their community involvement," said Polk County Commission Chairman Jack R. Myers, citing how the county's school administration center sits on land donated by the phosphate company. He said Polk County is now concerned about the industry migrating south.
"In the boon days, it was the place to work for your laborers," Myers said. "There were a lot of engineers and spin-off companies."
Myers, 47, recalled how his younger brother worked summer jobs for the mining industry. And like Wetherington, Myers said the mines were where high school graduates, those who didn't go to college, went looking for work.
"They ran 24-7," he said. "It was shift work, but it paid well, and a lot of people made a very good living. It's amazing the economic impact it's had."
Phosphate companies and Polk County officials are "sitting at the table" and working with the county for the creation of a reservoir. As the phosphate industry winds down, Myers said his county is looking for new power plants to potentially replace the tax base phosphate provides.
Drew Guffy is a Realtor and insurance agent for Gibson & Wirt Inc., a 90-year-old Bartow business. Guffy's father was a chemical engineer, moved his family to Polk County and worked as an IMC chemical engineer.
"The attitude is that (phosphate) was certainly a source of high-paying jobs and the companies were part of the community," Guffy said. He also described phosphate companies as "good corporate citizens" in Polk County.
Myers and Guffy, like other Polk County residents, dismissed environmental and health worries. They view the environmental worries as an issue from the past because of greater regulatory oversight.
"The big effect, obviously, is the visual effects of strip mining," Guffy suggested. "They, basically, turn (the environment) upside down. The stuff on the bottom of the pile is what was on the top of the ground. And when they reclaim it, it's not the same as it was."
Linda Pipping James, 30, owns the Cookie Jar, a Bartow pastry shop also serving sandwiches and various coffees.
James is a fifth-generation Polk Countian whose family roots are in citrus and agriculture. Her grandfather sold land to a phosphate company. She hesitated to mention how one of her uncles suffered periodic respiratory problems and had to stay indoors when he lived near the mines.
"Now, I have friends working in the mines, and it has a big economic effect around here," James said. She has become more familiar with mining and is now even catering out at the Bartow mines. "It's a whole different world."
Bartow's story, however, is not unique in Bone Valley and the upper Peace River.
"Well, it's a living, just like anything else," James Arnold said as he finished his shift at the Farmland Green Bay Chemical Plant, outside of Mulberry. "If you ain't in this business, you're in something that pertains to it.
"Go up the road, and you'll see pumps, pipes, wire, welding and tire companies," Arnold said. "They're all here because of the mines."
Mulberry memories
There's no doubt in Lewetta Haag's mind that the phosphate industry has been good to Mulberry, a small city eight miles west of Bartow.
"They've done a lot of good for us around here," Haag said. She is the curator for Mulberry's Phosphate Museum that includes separate exhibits of fossils, the city of Mulberry history and the phosphate industry's history.
"The original museum was on the east side of Bartow in the 1950s," Haag said, explaining how the exhibits grew out of collections by local fossil hunters
The museum's exhibits are housed in Mulberry's historic railroad station and in railroad boxcars, donated by phosphate companies. Four years ago, local phosphate companies also contributed the money for a consultant to develop and renovate the museum's phosphate exhibits.
"They're just good, all-around people here," Haag said.
"Uniting the community and phosphate industry" reads the mission statement outside of the Elin Oak-Burger Phosphate Industry Gallery at the museum.
School children can dig for fossilized sharks teeth in a gravel sandbox, which is maintained by phosphate companies. A large bucket from a phosphate dragline sets in a corner of the play area.
Phosphate's integration into Mulberry can be seen throughout the museum.
Photographs and paintings, several portraying various aspects of phosphate mining, never can hang evenly on the walls. Adjacent to the museum is a CSX railroad line still running freight trains for the phosphate companies, rattling paintings and photographs crooked on the museum's walls.
A special exhibit remembers former Mulberry Mayor Carl M. Ellis Sr. -- better known as "Kid" Ellis to locals. He picked up the nickname when he boxed as a young man in the 1930s. Ellis first served on the Mulberry City Council in 1947 and then as mayor in 1948. He served as Mulberry major for 38 years, until he stepped down in 1990.
The Ellis exhibit also includes the hard hats he wore when he worked as an executive for the IMC mining corporation. He worked more than 40 years in the phosphate industry. Wetherington said it was not unusual in Polk County to see people in the phosphate industry elected to various city and county offices.
Mulberry citizens once debated whether they wanted to rename their home "Phosphate City."
Haag's daughter is among those who worked in an IMC mine and her granddaughter's husband is now working at IMC's Four Corners mine.
"Now, the mining is moving south, out of this area, so a lot of people got laid off and moved onto other jobs," Haag said. "They don't have the work force they had a years ago."
She suspects her granddaughter's husband and other mine employees in Polk will head south with the companies.
Along the 8-mile stretch of S.R. 60 between Bartow and Mulberry stand mounds gravel-gray phosphate ore, north of S.R. 60, and phosphogypsum -- the waste from phosphate mining -- south of S.R. 60. The 500-foot-tall mounds appear as tall as foot hills.
The mountains of phosphogypsum have traces of radioactivity, but any potential environmental hazards don't worry Haag.
"It's going to sit there until the EPA lets (the companies) do what they want to do with it," Haag said.
Where Haag lives, she said, "air sniffers" continually monitor the air quality, and one sits at the end of her driveway. Haag described herself as living in a rural area between two mining areas, and she said she's never heard the alarm go off.
"We're not really concerned with it," Haag said.
Although she's had a neighbor who saw a well go bad and a phosphate company dig her a new well, Haag said, "If I was worried about phosphate in the well water, I wouldn't be living out there."
Homeland reflections
Joel Barefoot, who worked "in the mines" for 32 years, recently bought the old-fashioned Martin Grocery store in Homeland, south of Bartow.
Located on an obscure side street in the shadow of a U.S. 17 overpass, the store has been in continuous operation since 1915. Homeland, one of the first pioneer towns in the region, found itself surrounded by phosphate mines after a mining boom in the 1950s.
"They paid a lot of bills," Barefoot said of the mines. "But there's a cost for a lot of things."
Jason Penny, a 73-year-old Homeland farm hand, said he drifted into the southern Polk County swamp lands from Mississippi 56 years ago. He was 17 and looking for labor work, and he's been in Polk ever since.
Penny is fond of rattling off the names of ranch owners who refused to sell out to the mines, only to watch the surrounding landscape turn from oaks and cow pastures to excavation sites and clay settling ponds. Citing names like "Old Man Will Cruz" and "Cater Clark," Penny said most of them have passed away.
Penny can also recall at least two large springs, one on each side of the Peace River, that dried up amid the mining boom.
"A lot of things has changed since '47," Penny said. "The mines caused a lot of problems. The (well) water gets rough sometimes. It's silted with clay and sulfur. because the mines just cut off the underground rivers."
But, back when the mining started, most folks felt there wasn't much choice.
"It wouldn't have paid no mind to think about it," he said.
Staff writer Greg Martin contributed to this article.
You can e-mail Steve Reilly at reilly@sun-herald.com
By STEVE REILLY
Staff Writer