Due to the storms that rolled across eastern Nebraska and Iowa earlier this week Milford Lake was required to reduce it’s release rate.

The lake was previously releasing 1,000 cfs but dropped it on Tuesday to 25 cfs due to flooding on the Missouri River according to R.J. Harms, Project Manager for the Corps of Engineers at Milford Lake.

Milford Lake is still about three and a half feet high but reducing the output rate has not hurt the lake.

“We only have about 400 or so coming in really from the Republican River, from the Clay Center gauge, and that’s slowly dropping out. With the wind that we’ve been having we have enough evaporation that it’s not really raising the lake a lot. We’re coming up maybe a 1/10th a day or something like that or a little less. We haven’t noticed any big increase yet since we shut our gate. We hope to be able to open back up and in theory that should us with the algae situation as well,” Harms said.

The lake is still under a toxic blue green algae advisory that was issued last Thursday. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment is expected to come back out and test the lake again on Monday and those results are expected back by next Thursday.

Under an advisory water contact is not prohibited but is discouraged. Harms said they are still encouraging people to come out to the lake but they are advising them to be cautious and be aware of any large concentrations of algae.