Lake George is in the far northwest corner of Indiana, part of the Chicago metropolitan area.

In the 1900s, some of these areas were filled in with slag wastes from steel production and materials dredged from the Calumet River system.

As a result, the lake has lost about half of its surface area and has become extremely shallow with a maximum depth of about 4 ft (1.2 m).

[2] Studies in the 1990s demonstrated that phragmites and other non-native invasive plants had choked out native species in the lake.

The restoration involves a combination of herbicide applications to kill the invasive species followed by re-seeding with native plants.