Council approval first step in long process for second lake
Springfield’s long-debated proposal for a second lake appears poised for approval by the city council, but the controversial Hunter Lake would still face hurdles.
Mayor Jim Langfelder and eight aldermen on the 10-member Springfield City Council support a proposal to build the lake in partnership with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources as a nature preserve and second water source for Springfield.
The city council officially read the ordinance for the first time on July 7 and could vote on it as early as July 21.
The idea of a second lake for Springfield has been the subject of numerous studies by proponents, opponents and consultants hired by the city over more than 40 years. A handful of alternatives have also been proposed and studied, with opponents questioning even the need for a second water source. The city already owns more than 7,000 acres of property southeast of the current lake, land which the city acquired decades ago through purchases and eminent domain.
In his final appearance before the Springfield City Council Committee of the Whole on May 12, former City Water, Light and Power chief utility engineer Eric Hobbie presented an updated cost analysis for Hunter Lake versus the alternatives, which include siphoning water from gravel pits near the Sangamon River and piping water from the Illinois River near Havana.
That comparison has changed often over the 40-plus years Hunter Lake has been debated. As recently as 2007, CWLP calculated that the gravel pit idea would offer a cheaper up-front cost, although Hunter Lake was still deemed to provide a lower cost per million gallons of water. The most recent study presented by Hobbie on May 12, puts Hunter Lake’s initial cost at $108 million, below that of the other options.
“Hunter Lake is the lowest-cost alternative, period,” Hobbie said, referring to CWLP’s 50- year cost projections for all of the options.
Hobbie also told the council that the water demand is about 22 million gallons per day. More important than the average daily demand, he said, is the peak demand.
“Everybody talks about averages: our average use, our average use,” he said. “Unless we can supply those peaks, we’re going to be telling people we have no water. That’s what we have to plan for, are those peaks.”
Hobbie pointed to a 2011 study by the Illinois State Water Survey which concluded that Lake Springfield is “inadequate” to supply the city’s current demand for water during a severe drought. He said that in the case of the dreaded “100-year drought,” the current lake would be eight million gallons per day short of demand, which is expected to increase to 11 million gallons per day short, according to CWLP’s estimate of future demand.
However, Clark Bullard questions the utility’s assumptions about future demand. Bullard is a former engineering professor and a board member for the National Wildlife Federation and the Illinois-based Prairie Rivers Network. He’s also an opponent of the second lake proposal and a Springfield native who remembers the severe drought from 1952 to 1955 that nearly drained Lake Springfield. He now lives in Champaign but maintains ties to Springfield.
Bullard notes that Hobbie’s presentation to the city council on May 12 essentially ignored a population projection supplied by the Springfield Sangamon County Regional Planning Commission. Bullard says Hobbie added an additional five percent growth over what the commission estimated as a way to justify the need for Hunter Lake. Instead, Bullard points to several past projections that vastly overestimated the growth in Springfield’s water demand, which has remained nearly constant since the 1970s.
Rather than build the second lake, Bullard favors a four-pronged approach: utilize the gravel pits, dredge the existing lake to increase capacity, incentivize water conservation and retire the oldest coal-fired generators at CWLP, which rely on water from the lake for cooling. Bullard says the gravel pits could be replenished by the Sangamon River more quickly than was estimated in a 2012 study commissioned by the utility. He also believes dredging could restore roughly a quarter of Lake Springfield’s capacity lost to silt, while charging more for water during a drought would cut demand. Additionally, Bullard says retiring the old coal boilers would allow CWLP to lower its minimum required water level because the lake’s intake for drinking water is eight feet below the intake for the power plant’s cooling system.
“The real alternative is managing that combined infrastructure more costeffectively and looking at the demand side for opportunities, rather than the supply side,” he said.
Even if the Springfield City Council approves Ordinance 2015-216 to authorize Hunter Lake – which appears likely to happen this month – that doesn’t necessarily mean the lake will be built. CWLP spokeswoman Amber Sabin says the utility would still have to obtain permits from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, Illinois Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The city council previously approved different proposals for the second lake in 1973 and 1988, but the project stalled in both instances. In March 2014 the council rejected another proposal. The current proposal is different in that it would prevent residential and commercial development along the waterfront, similar to Clinton Lake 40 miles east of Springfield.
Donna Jones, chief of the regulatory branch for the Illinois and Missouri Section of the Army Corps of Engineers, says the permit application for Hunter Lake is “still in a holding pattern” because the original environmental impact statement needs to be updated to reflect the current condition of the land. Jones seems weary when talking about Hunter Lake, likely because the Army Corps has considered the various proposals almost as long as the city council has.
“The city has to decide what they really want to do,” Jones said. “They have to get a firm direction, because starting and stopping doesn’t get you anywhere.”
Contact Patrick Yeagle at [email protected].
