Lakeshore Lane homeowner James Protzman looked out from his back yard and then walked along the shore to where the brown water met the lake's normal blue-green surface.

"You can see it from here," he said, pointing. "Whatever sedimentation management human beings have created it's never sufficient."

Protzman, a former Chapel Hill Town Council member, has lived on the lake about 18 years. The neighborhood association dredged it in 2001 at a cost of $1.2 million, all paid by the 330 households and prorated so that those on the water paid more, he said.

Friday, with the water behind his house an opaque brown, Protzman said construction runoff like last week's may force the neighborhood to dredge the lake sooner than it otherwise might have to.

Town officials investigated the situation when The Chapel Hill News called Town Hall on Friday and confirmed it was coming from the state Department of Transportation road project upstream.

"It was DOT, Weaver Dairy Road construction," said Wendy Smith, the town's stormwater management educator. "Evidently the erosion control failed or was not sufficient to keep the sediment from running in the heavy rain."

About 0.44 inches of rain fell starting at 5 a.m. Friday, as measured at Horace Williams Airport, said Kathleen Carrroll, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

The town does not approve the state's erosion control plans but has asked for a copy of an inspection report DOT is required to do after it rains, Sue Burke, the town's stormwater engineer, said Monday.

DOT is using a variety of erosion control methods along Weaver Dairy Road, and the town had not received the report as of Monday morning. Efforts to reach the DOT engineer working on the report were unsuccessful Monday.

The Lake Forest Association has taken measures to slow sedimentation in Eastwood Lake, including installing essentially a settling pond where Booker Creek feeds the lake.

"The sedimentation is ongoing but not at the dramatic rates the lake has seen historically," resident Don Brewer said.

Silt buildup is a common problem in man-made lakes like Eastwood Lake, built in 1938, he added. "We wish the lake were Adirondack clear, but that's not going to happen."

Protzman knows it's just a matter of time before Eastwood Lake must be drained and dredged again.

The last time, he said deer grazed on grass growing from the dried lake bed as bulldozers removed dirt for about six months.

That dredging left the lake six feet deep because that's as far down as the neighbors could afford, he said. With the buildup since then he reckons the lake is just five feet deep in most parts.

"At some point I'm going to pay to have that silt that construction dumped in my back yard removed," he said. "(DOT's) not going to pay. I'm going to pay."

"I'm not complaining about living on a lake; I hope that's clear," he said. "I'm just commenting on the nature of progress ... if you can call it progress."