Does anyone know if they ever considered using displacement to save recreational lakes suffering from drought? Could even develop a variable system for it pretty simply.... but all we have to do is displace large volumes of deeper unused water and BAM! Lake ramps are at proper levels, lakes safe to run, fishing/watersport/boating economy is more stable... win/win for us regardless of loss of drinking water. Who uses the very deepest parts of the lakes anyways? It's the smartest thing I could think of in lieu of building new reservoirs (still requires more rain) as far as it pertains to us as fishermen.

Sure it doesn't help with drinking water or whatever else, but eventually we will get hurricane rain and having the additional reservoir capacity will help then, but for now they just get under the ramps and marinas quicker.


Thoughts? Who wants to help me start dropping sand bags in and anchor an inflatable blob down there? haha

I don't think you thought that through very much lol.

Wow, I used to have random thoughts like that back in the 70's... It was usually accompanied with a phenomenon called "the munchies"! Lol

Going to move all the "displacement" when rain does finally come or just drink the rocks?

Because the water is drawn from the bottom of the middle of the lake...?


And technically you could have a large (several) inflatable bladders anchors that were variable to raise and lower.

I am not saying it's a free solution but it's probably cheaper than building new reservoirs that still need rain and still have the exact same issues when lake levels drop.

I don't think the people commenting that I haven't thought it through thought about it themselves at all.

Displacing water pushes lake level up, win-win. You don't get more mass but you get more volume. Same amount of water but you can still use it. I'm certain it could be implemented but at what cost who knows. I still think it's very clever and a pretty simple/basic solution. Certainly viable on a smaller scale more easily... you'd just have to have the weight to sing a suitably durable bladder of air to displace the water. I was just wondering if it had ever been done or experimented with on any scale before in the sense I was describing it.

When a lake is at less than 50% capacity and the deepest water is say 30 feet. You would have to nearly displace all the "deeper" water to raise the level to "full pool".

The idea is novel, but not sure it's possible.

Agreed

The deepest water would always remain the same depth within reason and you'd have a large surface area. The areas nearest shore are steepest generally. The amount needed to raise vs. spread the lake would be a desirable ratio I am certain. If you raised the entire lake bed up 5ft in effect, the lake wouldn't be 5ft shallower, the surface of the lake just raises 5ft in elevation, and gets the ramps and stuff back out of the water. It' a more elegant solution than you probably realize even.

Definitely agree on plausible to put in effect probably not but anything is possible with enough money, and probably much cheaper than new reservoirs or de-silting current ones

So if you used air bladders I guess sooner or later we would run out of oxygen to breathe. This could get real serious. I think I'll just stick to low lake levels.

So when that extremely large rock falls into PK (or is it Whitney) how much would it cause lake to rise?

Pray for rain...

I want some of your kool aid.

Are you smoking the good stuff now? Or did you do something earlier in life that could have a long lasting effect ?

Would sure suck to snag an alabama rig on the bladder. Big airbubble come up and sink your boat. Then everyone else on the lake gets stranded below ramp level and cant get their rigs out.