Hunter Lake is a proposed 3,070-acre (12.4 km2) reservoir to be created by damming Horse Creek, a tributary of the Sangamon River. If the lake is built, its construction would flood a section of bottomland in southeastern Sangamon County, Illinois near the city of Springfield. The lake is a project of City Water, Light & Power, the local municipal electric utility.[1]
The Hunter Lake project was first mooted in the 1950s after a severe drought in the summer of 1954 caused City Water, Light & Power's operating reservoir, Lake Springfield, to temporarily lose much of its storage capacity. Since 1954, although the severe drought of that year has not recurred, continued fluctuations in runoff from the Lake Springfield drainage zone has caused the lake's level to rise and fall in cycles that cannot be predicted ahead of time and diverge much more from the lake's mean water level than had been predicted when the lake was built in the 1920s and 1930s. This has led to calls for the construction of Hunter Lake as a buffer lake. Water would be pumped out of, or into, Hunter Lake from Lake Springfield in order to maintain the water level of the parent lake close to a stable level.
If Hunter Lake is built, it would provide an additional 21,300,000 US gallons (81,000,000 l; 17,700,000 imp gal) of water per day for City Water, Light & Power and the city of Springfield. The lake project also includes a buffer zone of 4,700 acres (1,900 ha) of forest, grassland and wetlands.[1] Because Hunter Lake's level would fluctuate sharply over time, much of this buffer zone would be under water part of the time, and damp or dry in other seasons.
City Water, Light & Power has purchased land to be flooded for Hunter Lake and provide the buffer zone, completed engineering studies for the lake, and begun to seek permits from higher governmental authorities to construct a dam and fill the lake. As of 2010 their application remains under consideration with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.[1]
If Hunter Lake is built, it will be managed for storage capacity purposes, which means that the lake level will fluctuate sharply with variation in precipitation. Creeks that will flow into the lake will sometimes alternate between being estuaries and mud flats. For this reason, Hunter Lake will not be an ideal reservoir for some forms of shoreline recreation, such as swimming.