Water. It's an essential part of life, and clean drinking water is becoming more difficult to secure in some parts of the United States where droughts, algae blooms and contamination have fouled the waters.
In the Bloomington area, it's Lake Monroe — Indiana's largest man-made lake — that supplies drinking water to about 120,000 people. The City of Bloomington Utilities pumps about 14.5 million gallons of water to residents in mainly Monroe and Brown counties from the lake that was used by about 1 million people this past year for swimming, boating and other forms of recreation.
August is National Water Quality Month and World Water Week is Aug. 26-30, so it's a good time to look at our waterways. In Indiana, fresh water is not only vital for Hoosiers to drink but it also is necessary to supply agricultural, industrial and economic needs.
There's a delicate balance with the waters of Lake Monroe, which are controlled by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. While many people want to fish and boat in the lake, those waters must remain clean enough to provide drinking water.
To that end, members of the Friends of Lake Monroe are talking with officials about creating a watershed coordinator position. The fact that Lake Monroe has failed to meet the federal clean water standards for the past three years is something that has helped propel the members, many of whom are scientists, to work harder toward finding ways to change the water.
The group is working with officials in all the counties and all the entities that have a stake in Lake Monroe to put together a watershed plan, according to Sherry Mitchell-Bruker, president of the Friends group. It's a long process and during that time, Mitchell-Bruker said, the Friends group is also negotiating with city and county officials for matching funds if they secure a state grant to fund the watershed coordinator position.
"We would get notification in the spring of 2019 if we get the grant," she said.
After that, the Friends of Lake Monroe would hire a coordinator and begin collecting data for a baseline measure of the Lake Monroe watershed to determine what needs to be done.