September 26, 2026
North Prong Alafia River, Mulberry: The 154 Snook That Started the Repair
When 1997's acid spill came down Skinned Sapling Creek into the North Prong, the first act of repair on the Alafia was a release of exactly 154 juvenile snook
On December 7, 1997, a containment stack breached at the Mulberry Phosphates plant in Mulberry and released acidic process water into Skinned Sapling Creek, which runs into the North Prong of the Alafia River. The water that came out of the holding ponds that Sunday morning had a pH below 2 — more acidic than lemon juice, as the Tampa Bay Times put it that week. It traveled roughly 36 miles of the Alafia before it reached Tampa Bay.
How much got out has never entirely settled. The Tampa Bay Times reported 60 million gallons in the days afterward. NOAA's case file for the release puts it at approximately 50 million.
The North Prong begins near Mulberry and joins the South Prong, which begins near Bradley, to form the main river channel in eastern Hillsborough County. From there the river runs to Hillsborough Bay at Riverview, and that is where most of the dead fish showed up by the middle of the week. They were largely saltwater species — snook, sheepshead, catfish — because tides carry salty water from Tampa Bay miles upstream, and those fish were well up the river when the acid came down it. Tom Cardinale, then assistant director of the water division for the Hillsborough County Environmental Protection Commission, described what was floating near Riverview: "We're talking 2- to 3-foot-long snook," he said. Testing that Wednesday put the river's pH below 4 from Bell Shoals Road to U.S. 301.
The damage assessment that followed counted about 377 acres of freshwater wetland vegetation affected, including eight acres of mature hardwood trees. Blue crabs and pink shrimp died along with the fish. The species federal trustees recorded in the kill included common snook, sand sea trout, striped mojarra and hardhead catfish.
In 1998, as emergency restoration, 154 juvenile snook were released into the Alafia.
A $3.7 million settlement with Mulberry Phosphates' insurance company in 2002 set aside $2.4 million to improve habitat in the freshwater sections of the river, and much of the Alafia had recovered on its own well before that money was spent. In February 2012, the scientists planning the restoration recommended doing the work about 15 miles southwest of the spill site, in Hillsborough County — not on the Polk County stretch that had taken the acid. Five projects closer to Mulberry were considered and ruled out, either because they involved private land or because they would not have produced much environmental improvement, or would have needed long-term monitoring and maintenance to hold.
The chosen site was Stallion Hammock, inside the 4,933-acre Balm-Boyette Scrub Preserve south of Brandon, where 18 acres of wetlands damaged by phosphate mining would be restored. Pringle Branch runs through there into Fishhawk Creek, and Fishhawk Creek runs into the Alafia. John Ryan, a Winter Haven environmentalist who had pushed to keep the restoration upstream, told The Ledger that being parochial about the location made no sense, and that what mattered was that restoration happened at all.
The rest of the settlement work went downstream, toward the end of the 36 miles the acidic water had covered. At MacDill Air Force Base, the estuarine habitat work restored tidal hydrology, removed non-native vegetation, re-established wetland elevations through site grading and planted native vegetation, finishing in 2013. The same year at the same base, 1,781 oyster domes and 3,250 shell bags were installed to restore 9,374 square feet of oyster reef. Another oyster reef was constructed in Hillsborough Bay in the spring of 2015.
The 18 acres at Stallion Hammock, the one piece of the project sited in the Alafia's own freshwater basin, were still listed as in planning on NOAA's case file for the Mulberry release.
Sources
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