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 reoccurred, 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.
