After reaching as high as nine feet above normal over the past month Milford Lake’s water level is right at where they would normally like to see it, two and a half feet high.

RJ Harms, Corps of Engineers Project Manager at Milford Lake explained that the Corps of Engineers reduced the outflow at Milford Lake to 800 cfs just before the 4th of July Holiday weekend.

“We’re really just kind of matching whats coming in now. We’ll hold this and see how things go. We’re about two and a half feet above normal and that’s where we would normally be through the summer anyway, we like to keep it maybe a foot or two high through the summer,” said Harms. “That seems to make the boat ramps work better, the marinas like that, and we’ll have more water over some shallow areas so it’s better for the recreation boaters.”

Harms added that because of the high water there’s still a lot of clean up to do around the lake, picking up drift wood and adding more gravel to some roadways. The only damage he knew of was focused on the north half of the lake.

“Fortunately we didn’t really have much damage, the north end of the lake up at Clay County Parks probably had the most. They had some electric services, utilitiy sites where they have hookups for the campers, some of those went under water so they had damage to the electrical inside some of those units.”

So far the lake has been fortunate and has not had any issues with blue green algae. Cooler temperatures and rain in May and June could be contributing factors to that. Harms said they will continue to keep an eye on it, especially if the weather turns warm again with little to no wind.