Submitted by coldrum ---
An archaeological find that includes several human teeth, bone fragments and tools -- some up to 5,000 years old -- has put the highly anticipated Lake Lawton on hold, again. The $15 million project to flood 7,000 acres at the end of Malabar Road is stalled indefinitely as federal officials negotiate with the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes over how to proceed.
About a month ago, excavators found several human teeth, human and animal bone fragments and tools within the area to be flooded for the lake. The items were found during the excavation of oval- shaped mounds about 100 feet long and six feet high in the northern half of the Three Forks Marsh Conservation Area.
"All three of them are very significant. They have lots of information and very good preservation," said David McCullough, an archeologist for the Army Corps of Engineers in Jacksonville.
Workers have been excavating layers of shell and other material by hand, with each layer exposing a different era of occupation. Lab analysis dates some of the finds back 5,000 years.
The Three Forks Marsh Conservation Area was the last major piece of the 20-year, $250 million Upper Basin restoration of the St. Johns River's headwater marshes. The project adds new levees, structures and flow-ways to move water across 13,737 acres of marsh.
As more farmland became available, the project had to be redesigned and new environmental studies completed. Then, federal funding shortages led to further delays, corps officials said.
The project was about 80 to 90 percent done, officials said, when the human remains were discovered. McCullough noted, however, that it's not a burial ground, and the unearthed remains were reburied. Other dug-up items -- fishhooks, awls to drill small holes with and tools fashioned from bones -- are being sent to a laboratory, McCullough said.
Corps officials plan to meet this month with tribe officials from the Seminoles in Florida and Oklahoma and the Miccosukee in Florida to negotiate how the federal agency ought to proceed.
The archeological findings have left uncertain when Lake Lawton will be flooded and the final cost, corps officials said.
The corps may be able to "mitigate" in order to finish the roughly 1,000-foot gap in the levee plug needed to flood Lake Lawton, Milam said.
For more, see Florida Today.
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