The next culture evidenced in the fragmentary artifactual sequence is the Early Archaic presence of side-notched Bolen-type knives, widely distributed and densely represented throughout the entire southeastern U.S. Many of these datable markers and their associated stone and bone tools from about 9,500 years before present have been found in and around the Ichetucknee River. Based on their distribution, the Bolen hunters lived at least seasonally in settlements during a time of increasing temperature and the increasing availability of surface waters, such as springs and wetlands.


Perhaps the most populous prehistoric period in North Florida was the Middle Archaic when colorful, heat-treated chert was used to craft elegant stone knives and projectile points attached to atlatl throwing spears. These Archaic hunters traveled seasonally between cooler interior mast-producing forests during the summer and coastal locations with abundant shellfish during the winter.


Clay pottery and the bow and arrow were both invented or introduced to the Ichetucknee Native Americans by the Woodland Period starting about 3,000 years ago. Human lifestyles became more sedentary as crops of squash and corn were increasingly cultivated in forest clearings, leading ultimately to the Mississippian chiefdoms and temple mounds encountered by the first Europeans who walked in Florida.


Within a century of Spanish, French, and English occupation, the local Native Americans were exterminated except in missions, one of which was on the banks of the Ichetucknee River at Mission Springs. With the exit of the Spanish occupiers by the mid-1750s, the Seminoles occupied local lands until driven out by the American Army under Andrew Jackson and cracker settlers in the early 1800s.


During this over 15,000-year history, the Ichetucknee and its eight named springs increased in flow, likely to modern levels by 10,000 years ago. Since that time the Ichetucknee has been a natural miracle of Mother Nature, powerful enough to be heard boiling from the earth, crystalline clear along its entire length, decorated by beautiful plants and fish, and pure as water can possibly be. No wells, no fertilizer, no plastic bottles. Just animals and people who lived close to the earth without the modern tyranny of machines, deadlines, and uncontrolled population growth.


With more humans came the need for more water and food. In a self-perpetuating cycle, as more new neighbors moved into Columbia County, they brought their farms, animals, industries, cars, houses, limerock mines, cement factories, schools, cars, trucks, septic tanks, and wastewater disposal sites. The inevitable consequences of this growth, not consciously avoided by government and active civic oversight, have been overexploitation of our shared groundwater resources and increasing pollution with the byproducts of modern human development.


Flows have been measured and reported in the Ichetucknee River and springs for the last 90 years. In that short time, equivalent to a blink-of-the-eye in comparison to the residency of humans on this land, average spring flows have declined due to groundwater pumping by an estimated 15 percent. The observed flow reduction in the Ichetucknee River is due to increasing regional groundwater extractions near the spring and as far away as Jacksonville, Florida and Brunswick, Georgia.


The record of nitrate nitrogen pollution in the Ichetucknee River and springs starts in 1946 and continues through the present. Due to increasing human-derived nitrogen sources, including fertilizer and wastewater, nitrate nitrogen concentrations in the Ichetucknee River and springs have increased from an estimated 0.05 mg/L (milligrams per liter) in 1900 to a current average of 0.80 mg/L.


On top of the Ichetucknee’s relatively recent loss of water quantity and quality, the river and springs are suffering the additional stress of humans loving them to death. Hundreds of thousands of recreationalists flock to the beleaguered river and springs each year for one more tube ride, one more paddle trip, and one more snorkel swim down its natural water flume.


But the Ichetucknee is not friendless. In 1994, a biologist with the Florida Park Service started the first Ichetucknee Working Group to share information and educate stakeholders who wanted to protect the system into the future. The working group ultimately led to the establishment of the Ichetucknee Alliance, a union of concerned citizens who realized that education alone was not enough to reverse the increasing cycle of harm that was degrading this priceless natural resource. Education was mostly complete, the problems were identified, and the restoration/protection needs were clear. The Ichetucknee Alliance boldly demanded action, not empty words and promises, from a state government that is more interested in the appearance of protection than the reality.


It is a long, difficult climb to take the Ichetucknee springs and river out of the degraded state that we find it in today. Working together, the Ichetucknee Alliance, the Florida Springs Institute, and the Florida Springs Council are joining forces to change the future of the Ichetucknee from the path of ultimate destruction to a return to its former grandeur.


Unlike many other Florida springs, nitrate levels in the Ichetucknee springs have been fairly consistent and appear to have leveled off over the past 20 years. Ichetucknee Springs is the first Florida state park to have a recreational use carrying capacity. Unfortunately, through their reliance on questionable science and inaccurate water models as well as their lack of political will to cap or deny water use permits, the river’s legal guardians – the Suwannee River Water Management District, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and the Governor of Florida who controls those agencies – continue to issue more groundwater withdrawal permits that ultimately attract more people, generate more wastewater, fertilizer application, and nitrogen pollution, and further deplete flows within the Ichetucknee springs and river.


The Florida Springs Institute has determined that regional groundwater pumping will need to be reduced by 23 million gallons per day to restore protective flows to the Ichetucknee River and springs. This water quantity restoration can be accomplished by reducing regional pumping in and around the Ichetucknee System by about 5 percent. Converting a fraction of the intensive irrigated farmland in the Ichetucknee springshed to longleaf pine plantations will help attain this flow restoration goal while also reducing nitrogen pollution in our groundwater.


A study of history tells us that humans have wrought unimaginable destruction on many of the world’s greatest natural wonders. Once destroyed, natural ecosystems may never recover in the life span of humans. While such a future for the Ichetucknee seems beyond the intent of reasonable leaders, there is no firm line in the sand for preventing this fate. Groundwater withdrawals and fertilizer use need to be capped and reduced. An Aquifer Protection Fee should be charged on all water uses and nitrogen pollution, to offset the cost of converting intensive farmland to healthy springs-compatible land uses.


Many millions of people have walked these lands before us. And many more will follow us down the same paths. It is our generation’s responsibility to give the future better than what the recent past has given us.