Kansas lake · state assessment record
Milford Lake
Assessment decisions reported by Kansas to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2024 reporting cycle.
- 16,000
- Assessed acres
- Lake
- Water type
- 1,146.3 ft
- Water Surface Elevation (provisional)
This waterbody in one line
Milford Lake, a lake in Kansas, is assessed as not supporting one or more designated uses, with 2 listed impairment causes in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2024). By assessed acreage it sits among the largest 1% of assessed lakes nationally (38,628 lakes with a filed area); its impairment list is among the longest nationally (2 listed causes vs 23,610 assessed lakes). Aquatic life is assessed as not supporting. A USGS gauge tracks its water surface elevation daily.
- Not Supporting
- overall status
- P100
- Assessed size nationally
- P10
- Shorter cause list
- Not Supporting
- aquatic life
Assessment verdicts are the state agency's decisions as reported to EPA ATTAINS; PlainLakes renders them without modification.
A composite of this record's EPA ATTAINS designated-use verdicts, filed impairment count, and assessment currency, weighted and benchmarked against the national corpus of assessed active waterbodies. This is a water-quality standing, not a human-recreation or property-value judgment, and dimensions with no filed verdict drop out rather than count against the score.
How Milford Lake reads against the filed register
Paragraphs are selected by this unit's percentiles and use matrix: different lakes lead with different dimensions. Figures are ATTAINS / portal register arithmetic, not advice.
The signature stat: assessed size
The number that most separates Milford Lake nationally is assessed size: 16,000 acres, larger than 100% of the 38,628 lake-type units with an area on file.
Every filed use falls short
On the uses this filer ruled on, recreation, aquatic life, every determination is Not Supporting. That is a use-by-use reading of the filed record, not a single overall lake grade.
Milford Lake: Category 4A reading
Category 4A means a TMDL (or equivalent) is already approved for the impairment on Milford Lake. The remaining work is implementation and tracking, read the cleanup-standing and cause rows for what the state already committed to address.
Longer than most cause lists
2 listed causes puts this unit above 80% of assessed lake-type records by list length. Treat that as a coding-and-sampling signal: states that split pollutants finely mint longer lists without proving worse water.
Overall status: not supporting
The filer's overall status for Milford Lake is Not Supporting. That tile summarizes the assessment unit; the designated-use rows and cause list are the evidence behind it.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, Kansas carries 328 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Milford Lake without modification. See our methodology for reporting-unit limits and gauge linking rules.
The record
Designated-use assessments
Fully Supporting and Not Supporting are the state's definitive verdicts; other entries mean the use was not conclusively assessed in this cycle.
| Designated use | Group | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Agricultural Supply Use--Irrigation | Other | Fully Supporting |
| Aquatic Life Use | Aquatic-life or related | Not Supporting |
| Domestic Water Supply | Drinking-water supply designation | Not Supporting |
| Primary Contact Recreation | Recreation | Not Supporting |
The record
Listed impairment causes
Causes the state listed as impairing designated uses of this lake, with the cycle each was first listed and the Clean Water Act action recorded against it.
| Cause | Affected uses | First listed | Cleanup standing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dissolved Oxygen | Aquatic Life Use | 2002 | TMDL approved |
| Eutrophication | Domestic Water Supply, Primary Contact Recreation, Aquatic Life Use | 2004 | TMDL approved |
Reading the record
Milford Lake: Category 4A reading
4A Category 4A: impaired, TMDL completed
Kansas filed this assessment unit as Category 4A: impaired, with a pollutant-budget TMDL already completed under 303(d). The listing remains an impairment finding; the plan is on file rather than still awaiting write-up.
Scale and rank
Milford Lake is one of 328 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Kansas, and one of 304 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 16,000 assessed acres it ranks 192nd by assessed size among the 38,628 lakes the dataset carries an area for, counting a state’s repeated filings of one water once, behind 191 lakes with a larger one.
Water level
A USGS gauge tracks this lake's water surface elevation daily, and the latest reading is 0.03 ft below the reading 30 days earlier, against a 365-day observed range of 6.6 ft. The state has not yet filed a definitive fish-consumption verdict for this record; that field populates when it reports it in a future Integrated Report cycle.
Water level: 365-day record
Daily water surface elevation values, feet above the National Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929 (NGVD 29), from USGS gauge 06857050 (Milford Lake Nr Junction City, Ks), shown weekly. Readings are daily-batch snapshots, not real-time conditions.
- Latest reading
- 1,146.3 ft 0.029999999999972715ft vs 30 days earlier
- 2026-08-15 · Provisional, subject to USGS revision
Water level: 365-day record
Subscribe to water level updates for Milford Lake (RSS)
124 of the 365 daily values in this window (34%) are provisional and subject to USGS revision; USGS has approved this gauge's record through 2026-04-13.
USGS operates 2 monitoring sites carrying this lake’s name; this record reads site 06857050, the only one reporting daily values. The other site is 391259097001800. Each site measures against its own zero, so their readings are not interchangeable.
USGS monitoring locations on this lake: 06857050 (read here), 391259097001800
In context
Where Milford Lake sits nationally
Assessed size among U.S. lakes
Distribution of assessed acreage across ATTAINS lakes filed with an area, counting a state’s repeated filings of one water once
16,000 Top 1% larger than 99%+ of 38,628 lakes
lakes the dataset carries an area for, counting a state’s repeated filings of one water once, bucketed by value
Source EPA ATTAINS · Reporting cycles 1987–2026
Listed causes vs waterbodies carrying a verdict
How many impairment causes U.S. waterbodies with a reported verdict carry
2 Longer than most more listed causes than 80% of 23,610 waterbodies carrying a verdict
named waterbodies carrying a verdict, bucketed by value
Source EPA ATTAINS · Reporting cycles 1987–2026
In both charts each bar is a band and taller bars hold more waterbodies; the dashed line and filled bar mark Milford Lake. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
Kansas context
ATTAINS carries 328 lake-type waterbodies in Kansas, 241 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 77 fully supporting. Among the 304 indexed units there, Milford Lake ranks 34th by listed-cause count (2 listed causes) and 1st by assessed size among the 304 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (241 statewide) . Its listed causes include Dissolved Oxygen and Eutrophication, which also appear among Kansas's most-filed impairment causes (led by Eutrophication).
| Other large assessed lakes in Kansas | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Tuttle Creek Lake Not Supporting | 15,380 |
| Waconda Lake Not Supporting | 12,602 |
| Perry Lake Not Supporting | 12,200 |
| Cheney Lake Not Supporting | 9,550 |
| John Redmond Lake Not Supporting | 9,400 |
| Wilson Lake Not Supporting | 9,040 |
Peers near Milford Lake's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (16,000 acres here).
- Rye Patch Reservoir · 16,001 acres · NV
- Pymatuning Reservoir-05030102001826 · 15,995 acres · PA
- Cass · 15,940 acres · MN
- Phelps Lake · 15,938 acres · NC
Similar cause load
Nearest listed-cause counts (2 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.
- 12th St. Beach · 2 causes · IL
- 31st St. Beach · 2 causes · IL
- 49th St. Beach · 2 causes · IL
- 57th St. Beach · 2 causes · IL
What to do with this record
- Assessment verdicts are cycle-based, not real-time. For fish-consumption decisions, your state advisory program is the binding source. Consumption status guide
- Water levels shown are daily snapshots. Seasonal drawdown and datum conventions matter when comparing levels. How to read level data
- Impairment listings follow the Clean Water Act 303(d) process; a listing is a regulatory finding, not a closure notice. 303(d) explained
PlainLakes renders state assessment decisions and federal gauge observations without modification. It does not issue advisories.
Assessment decisions on this page are rendered directly from state Integrated Report records in EPA's ATTAINS system; gauge figures are daily-value observations from the USGS National Water Information System, no number is typed in by an editor. Overall status, use verdicts, and causes are the state's reported decisions for assessment unit KS-LM019001. Counts and percentiles are computed across all lake-type records PlainLakes ingests from ATTAINS. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of 2026-08-17. Primary sources: EPA ATTAINS and USGS National Water Information System.