Sitting on their back porch on the south eastern shore of Lake Lemon, Jesse and Carol Trueblood look out over the water where they've been bringing their family for more than three decades.
It's not just a familiar place to spend summer vacations; extended family comes in each year from neighboring states, and their son grew up here.
"He proposed to his now wife out on the boat with the fireworks in the background," says Jesse Trueblood.
He's been coming to the lake long enough to see how it's changed through the years.
"I miss the access that used to be here when all of this was navigable," he says, pointing to the lake from his private dock. "Everything up to the trees was navigable and now most of what you see here is not."
That's because of all the sediment that gets washed into the lake from creeks and other tributaries.
It's a problem that all man-made bodies of water have to deal with. For Lake Lemon, most of that sediment comes from Bean Blossom Creek, which flows into the lake from the east and empties out right by the Trueblood's house.
The sediment settles on the bottom of the lake, and it's forming a delta that's been growing since the lake was built 64 years ago.
The only way to remove the soil once it's at the bottom of the lake is to dig it up, a process called dredging. Right now, that's done with an excavator on top of a barge, and it's pretty slow going.
James Van Tassel is the operations supervisor and lake biologist for the Lake Lemon Conservancy District. Out on the lake, he points out where the problems are the worst.
"Mostly what we've been doing is dredging access channels and getting people's docks in deeper water, so they can get out and access the lake," he says. "During that time the rest of the lake is still shallowing up where that delta is forming."
As much as 40,000 cubic yards of sediment is deposited into the lake each year. That's enough to fill almost 3,000 dump trucks. And right now, the conservancy district is only removing about 30 percent of that each year.
District management has been tracking the problem for years, and they recently tasked a Strategic Planning Committee with brainstorming some solutions.
Last week, lakefront property owners filled the Bloomington City Council chambers to hear what the conservancy district plans to do.
"The longer we wait, the worse it will get and the more it will cost," says Board Member Mary Jane Brown. "So, now is the time."
An engineering company conducted a survey of the current rate of sediment flow and suggests a range of options, from dredging access channels only to the most dramatic -- dredging the entire lake.
But each idea comes with advantages and disadvantages.
A complete dredging would be effective, but it creates an additional problem: where to put all that dirt brought up from the bottom of the lake.
Van Tassel says the best option is more measured: dredging just the east end near Bean Blossom Creek and using some of the sediment to build berms, long, low walls sticking out from the shore. That option would direct new sediment flow into specific areas.
"The longer we wait, the worse it will get and the more it will cost."
"Over time, it will make it easier for us to consolidate that sediment and clean it out rather than having it kind of scatter all throughout the lake," Van Tassel says.
Either way, the district needs to invest in faster, more efficient dredging equipment.
Right now, crews are limited to digging up the soil, placing it on a barge, and towing it to a dump site on shore. Hydraulic dredges can continuously dig and pump sediment through a pipe to a dump site miles away.
Strategic Planning Committee member Malcolm McClure says they got to see this equipment in action at a lake in Ohio, where a hydraulic dredge dug up about 300,000 cubic yards of dirt in one year.
"That's 30 years worth of dredging from the way we're doing it," he says. "So it's much more effective."
But that equipment is expensive. Dredging the whole lake would cost $8 million over the next four years. The more limited option would cost close to $1.4 million.
The conservancy district has some cash on hand and there are some grants they can apply for.
But McClure addressed another revenue source on a lot of people's minds.
"The big question: will we have to raise taxes? The correct answer: we don't know yet," he said at the public meeting.
Not everyone is happy about that possibility especially since the revenue would be spent almost exclusively on the east end of the lake.
But Van Tassel stresses the shoreline is shrinking; it's happening little-by-little every year. And if left unchecked, it will eventually reach the western part of the lake as well.
"A lot of people, I don't think, realize how much we're losing and how quickly we're losing it, Van Tassel says. "It's just going to keep creeping west, so you're just slowing losing it from the east to the west."
Back on the southeastern shore with Jesse and Carol Trueblood, you can see the evidence: driftwood sitting on dirt out in the middle of the lake where you'd expect several feet of water.
The Truebloods can't do all the things they used to on Lake Lemon, even though they've paid a couple thousand dollars out of pocket for some dredging near their property.
They see it as a worthwhile investment if it means they can keep bringing their family to Lake Lemon for the next few decades.
"Whatever it takes to bring the lake back to life, we're all for it," Jesse Trueblood says.
The conservancy district is still weighing all the options, but once officials decide on a path forward they could begin the work as soon as summer 2018.
