PORT CHARLOTTE — In 2009, Charlotte County resident Joanne Mulvaney started complaining about the water levels at the lake behind her home in the Parkside section of town.

The water levels at Sunshine Lake — a small, stormwater-retention pond that sits between Elkcam Boulevard and Aaron Street, just south of Midway Boulevard — and the adjacent Sunrise Waterway that flows into Charlotte Harbor had dropped significantly, Mulvaney said, and only got worse as time went on.