(Milford)– The Milford City Council Monday evening adopted a resolution supporting a study in an effort to get Lower Gar removed from the state’s list of impaired water bodies. Mayor Steve Anderson tells KUOO news the study would feed off one conducted by Hydrologist Doctor Larry Weber…
“Dr. Weber was looking at high water. This will look at basically the lake as a whole, not just that high water, but low water. That’s what our focus is on this, is actually look at what happens in low water scenarios and what can we do to reduce the water quality issues. Lower Gar’s impaired for turbidity algae, and that’s where this tries to head towards is how do we get Lower Gar off the impaired waters list, how do we get the algae issue resolved down in Lower Gar. Really it’s a low water issue is what causes that. When there’s no water flowing through the system it gets pretty stagnant down there and everything that’s come out of the watershed from up above is eventually ending up, like I said, in Lower Gar, so.”
As a result, Anderson says they’re hoping the county Board of Supervisors and other cities on the upper chain of lakes will also sign on to the resolution…
“The more that we have on this, this resolution, the better it is, and then we’ll take that to DNR and say we want to work with you to get a study going. They’ve been doing a similar project over in Silver Lake where the association over there and the city and the DNR have worked together and collaboratively to work on a plan for Silver Lake. The Iowa Great Lakes is a much bigger animal to tackle and so that’s what we thought it would be getting all of the communities on board to drive that forward would help maybe get this going, so.”
Anderson says he doesn’t know how long it might take to conduct such a study. He says they also don’t know how much it might cost or how it would be paid for.
