Gerald Rakestraw thinks Stone Mountain can take a half-inch of lake water and turn it into hill of frozen fun. And the amusement park can do it, he says, without taking a drop from the region’s depleted water supply.

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John Spink / jspink@ajc.com

Stone Mountain vice president of marketing, Sonny Horton tossed a snowball as the park prepared for its Snow Mountain last year. The park scrapped the idea in 2007 because of the area’s drought. It plans to revive the idea this year, using water from its lake, rather than from the DeKalb water reserves.

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Stone Mountain is considering reviving a proposal that last year dried up — to create Snow Mountain, a downhill snow slope on the lawn not far from where Confederate generals chiseled in rock keep an eternal vigil. This time, say Stone Mountain officials, they’d take water from its lake, not DeKalb’s water reserves.

“The idea of creating a winter wonderland park is pretty unique,” said Rakestraw, the park’s vice president and general manager.

Last year, it turned into a pretty hot topic. After the park announced plans to create a slope on the laser lawn behind Memorial Hall, drawing water from DeKalb’s supplies, critics pointed out that the region was snared in a deepening drought. Using water to create snow, they argued, was wasteful. Stone Mountain officials shelved the proposal.

Earlier this year, they pulled it out and took a harder look at the idea, said Rakestraw.

The park is considering pumping water from 350-acre Stone Mountain Lake, converting it to snow with specialized machinery. The process would begin in November or December, with the spectacle opening in January and running through February, a traditionally slow period at the park.

The snow field would begin at Memorial Hall’s deck, which looks out on Stone Mountain, and cascade downhill for about 400 feet. The 175-foot-wide attraction could accommodate 10 lanes of people bumping along in inner tubes.

By April, the site would be clean, and the park’s signature evening laser show would begin again, as it does in spring.

Engineers estimated that the $5 million effort would use 3 million to 4 million gallons of water — about a half-inch dip in the lake’s depth. As the snow melted, drains would funnel the water back to the lake, Rakestraw said. Hydrologists also figured the park would lose between 6-7 percent of the water to evaporation.

According to the experts, the park would return 90 percent of the water to the lake, Rakestraw said.

Using lake water is one of the latest ideas the park has embraced to reduce its consumption, said Rakestraw. It has installed waterless urinals throughout the 3,200-acre park, fixed leaky pipes and recently constructed a “porous” parking lot that absorbs rainwater. Officials say the park this year reduced its water consumption by 25 million gallons.

The latest proposal is not a done deal, Rakestraw said. Stone Mountain officials will announce in a few weeks whether to go forward with Snow Mountain, he said.

Stone Mountain can get into the snow-making business as soon as it wants, said Lori Routzahn of Dacula. Tagging along with friends on the opening day of Stone Mountain’s Yellow Daisy Festival, Routzahn said she thinks Snow Mountain is a great idea.

“I mean, we don’t ever get snow down here,” said Routzahn, who has a 6-year-old, Daniel. “The children would love it.”

Georgia ought to get a dose of snow, agreed Paul Stepney. Thursday afternoon, he and his wife, Kris Stepney, paused to admire that warm, green lawn that would be turned into chilled, white playground.

“I think it would be a lot of fun,” said Stepney, who gets frequent doses of snow at his home in Plainfield, Conn. “People down here don’t get to see snow all that often.”