Gull Lake water levels were maintained decades ago partly by water flowing in from two small channels at the north end.
Those channels are now gone, logging along them more than a century ago removed protective trees. Later, roads were built and the small waterways soon filled in by silt, soil and vegetation.
With Gull Lake now at record-low levels, Gull Lake Watershed Society member Bruce Rout was at Lacombe County Thursday in a separate capacity asking for the county's support for an application for an Alberta Community Partnership grant.
The $200,000 grant would help fund a feasibility study on reopening the channels to allow a constant flow of water into the lake to help restore it.
A similar pitch will be made to Ponoka County next week and the society plans to submit an application to meet a late September deadline.
Rout said the point of the study is to look at the area at the north end of the lake and see whether inflow could be restored.
"The proposal is basically is repair damage to water flow, re-divert streams back to the original stream beds and install flood control," he said.
"The study is what is feasible and how much that would cost and so forth," he told council.
Engineering consultants would undertake the work and input would be sought from those who use the lake for recreation, area farmers, energy industry companies, Alberta Fish and Wildlife and anyone else with a stake in happens with the lake.
The study would look at the effects on the lake of surface water and water in underground aquifers, determine whether the invasive species Prussian carp is present, who any changes would affect the environment and agriculture along with a detailed look at the large amounts of water in ponds north of the lake.
"Also, we want to take a look at historical records to find out what happened," he said.
History books claim that in the late 1800s Gull Lake covered more than 120 square kilometres. By the late 1970s, the lake was three metres shallower and covered 90 square kilometres and it has continued to shrink over the last 50 years.
The society believes water is available that could be diverted to the lake. For example, a beaver dam has created a huge water body north of Highway 53.
"There's a massive amount of water up there we could possibly put back into Gull Lake," he said.
Before any options are considered, such as clearing channels or installing culverts under roads, the potential impacts have to be investigated.
"Administrators can't really make proper or intelligent decisions unless they have adequate data and the data is very sparse on that particular area.
"We need to find out what's best for everybody, and that's the data we're missing."
Rout said the lake is losing five million cubic metres of water a year or 10 cubic metres a minute.
The society has also been deeply involved in efforts to have a Gull Lake water stabilization program, that took water from the Blindman River and pumped it into the lake during dry periods, restarted.
A filter system has been devised to ensure Prussian carp and their eggs are not transferred into the lake.
The Alberta government has held a number of open houses and an online session in the last two weeks to gather public input before a decision is made.
