I have pondered this a bit in the past. Unlike the “drain the ocean thread”, this could actually be done. I would like to try it. Lake Erie is a good choice as it is fairly shallow and if drained would only have a fairly small pool in the center remaining. Think of the shipwrecks and bodies!
To do this I propose a channel be built along the south and north shores to contain the water flow from all the rivers. This can be pile driven interlocking steel plates like they build piers out of (Like they are using on Oak Island this season to drain the cove). The tops could be braced to the shores if needed. The channels would run from the Detroit river to the Niagara River along each coast. So by my reckoning the total width of the two channels would only need to be as wide as the Niagara, and only that wide on the eastern end as the flow increases along each path.
Looking at a profile you can see the lake slopes eastward and most of it should drain. At the eastern end of the channels we would need to tunnel to below the depth at Niagara Falls or built a coffer dam and pump the channels over the top into the existing Niagara River. If we are willing to give up about 1/3 of the depth of the eastern basin it is much easier!
To start with, the Niagara River at Buffalo is 600 feet above sea level. The maximum depth of the river at that point is 41 feet. Ergo, you can only drain Lake Erie to 559’ above sea level. Since the lake’s mean elevation above sea level is 571’ you’ll only drain the top 12’. Lake Erie may be shallow, but it’s a good deal deeper than 12’. You won’t "drain " the lake, you’ll just make the shoreline somewhat wider.
Lake Huron rolls, superior sings
In the rooms of her ice-water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man’s dreams
The islands and bays are for sportsmen
And farther below Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the gales of November remembered
The Great Lakes are all interconnected. Their water levels are critical and affect vast numbers of cottagers and recreational and commercial boating, and docks often have to be adapted or rebuilt to respond to changing water levels, and cottagers and other property owners gain or lose huge amounts of beachfront property and suffer other damages with changes in water levels. For that reason and many others, water management in the Great Lakes is governed by bilateral US-Canada treaties. Moreover, all of the lakes including Erie cross the international boundary and belong to both countries (only Lake Michigan is technically entirely in the US, but hydrologically Michigan and Huron are really one lake whose water levels are equalized in either direction through the Straits of Mackinac).
So for very practical economic, environmental, hydrological, political, and legal reasons this is a non-starter.
Did you look at the cross sectional chart I linked to? It’s dead simple. Channel down far enough down (all the way to the falls) or pump it over the cofferdam.
And understand, this is only temporary. We solve all the shipwreck mysteries and remove all the bodies for analysis and fill her back up. People will love it!
I used to have a map of Lake Erie shipwrecks I got at Put-In-Bay one summer. If I could go dig it out of my parents’ attic, you can borrow it so you’ll know where to look.
I’ve heard Lake Erie described as a very wide, slow river.
The** bottom** of the river is below the level of the lake. It doesn’t really matter how high the banks of the river as long as they’re above the surface of the lake.
I think a good way to start would be to blast the Niagara River to eventually connect the falls to the Lake directly. We already have the means to completely shut off the falls, and can do so while we are blasting.
Once we’ve rebased the falls at the the beginning rather than the middle of the Niagara River we should evacuate everyone downstream, release the dam, and see what happens. The cataclysm might carve out channels and undercut the falls even more for us without our intervention. Then we could proceed to blast away some more as needed.
So now I understand that what you’re proposing has nothing to do with the Niagara River. You just want to build a ditch/tunnel that drops 325’ feet in 35 miles, basically a giant water slide.
In that case, there’s no need to mess around with channels along the shores, draining into the river etc. Just go out to the deepest point in the lake and start there. Bore a tunnel straight through to Lake Ontario. Pull the plug at either end and Erie will drain just like a big bathtub. It can’t be any more difficult than what you’re proposing.
This project needs a facade of “public service”. You should contract with Musk’s “Boring Company” to send the drain west, and link up to the Colorado River, thus “bringing water to the parched southwest”.
That’s okay, you could always do the same to Lake Tahoe, which has a decent amount of water as well: it should be enough that California won’t worry about water for another … year or two. Might need to pay off Nevada and get the Pyramid Lake Paiute on board but that’s fewer people than the great lakes.
Plus the tunnel only has to be a few miles or so, and you’ll also be able to take advantage of the thousands of feet of drop to generate hydro along the way.
Unfortunately, Tahoe isn’t a renewable resource since the lake is almost in balance as it is and so would refill very slowly. But I’m up for it. No, I don’t like skiing, why do you ask?
Related to the discussions here on depths, it’s also worth remembering that the Edmund Fitzgerald is 200 feet longer than the depth in Lake Superior where the ship sank.
Federal authority supercedes this, right? Since when you talk about pumping water across the USA to water California, the Federal government could ram this through because it’s interstate commerce, right?
Not that this is a good option - you would be pumping water over two mountains and you’d have immense friction losses over that many thousands of miles of canals and pipes. Probably cheaper and less energy costly to just make the water you need directly from seawater using reverse osmosis. And to stop subsidizing the farmers in California, have them move the farms to the midwest.
Cool! Gigantic plug hole in the middle of the lake! Does the water spin clockwise or anti clockwise? Could Musk drop submarines down through the hole? A Musk transit tunnel?
