The new Project Manager for the US Army Corps of Engineers at Milford Lake has been on the job for about two weeks.

Bill Whitworth was named project manager in October and he said some of his early objectives will be to maintain the level of service provided, checking the status of the facilities and becoming acquainted with the lake, community and stakeholders.

“I don’t want to change things that are working really well and I want to look at things that may not be working so well and try to improve them; but to do that, I need to just become really familiar with the lake and the issues and the stakeholders, [and] that will play out over time, but I do want to make sure we have a safe and enjoyable experience for those people that are coming this summer,” said Whitworth.

Whitworth said that the issue of blue-green algae is something that involves more than just Corps-owned land. “It’s a watershed issue, and working with the other folks that have lands in the watershed that supports Milford Lake; the blue green algae is something that’s in waters around the State, it’s a natural organism in the State.”

It is something that won’t be solved overnight.

“The issue has been thought that because of nutrients and weather, those combinations of things have combined to create some of these bloom issues…we can do little bits to make [it] better and that’s what I’ll be looking in to and trying to figure out what can we do that we haven’t been doing,” said Whitworth.

A Fort Hays State graduate, Whitworth has longed to come back to Kansas. Prior to accepting the position at Milford Lake he worked as the Chief of Resource Management at Theodore National Park in North Dakota.

Whitworth began work on December 13th.