Blue Lake water levels suffering from dry conditions
ONAWA, Iowa (KCAU) — The docks at Blue Lake, outside of Onawa, are normally surrounded by water, but because of low water levels, they are sitting high and dry.
'The level of the lake is very, very, very low. This is a lake I've been around for 50 years, even though I now live in Omaha. Honestly, I've never seen it this low,' said Nebowa Christian Camp Pastor Jeff Hicks.
With the upcoming holiday weekend, the lake would start to get busy with campers, boaters and fisherman, but because of dropping lake levels, not as many people are coming to the lake.
'You can look around the state campground here itself and it's empty. Four years ago, five years ago, it would have been covered full of campers. It's the middle of May, so it's camping season.' added Hicks.
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Blue Lake is an oxbow lake that covers 275,000 surface acres. It has no direct connection to the nearby Missouri River and relies on groundwater to keep it full. It also relies on rain and snow – something we haven't had a lot of the last few years.
'If you look at last fall, like in October, we got a lot of rain, and levels kind of jumped back a little bit as well as groundwater levels did, and you rely on that snowpack and snow melt to infiltrate the ground and bring those levels back up. We didn't get much snow at all, at least no meaningful snow,' explained Fisheries Management Biologist Ben Wallace with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR).
Jeff Hicks would like to see the DNR not rely on mother nature and pump water into the lake to fill it back up.
'The DNR needs to turn the well-pumps back on or the pumps. I think that needs to happen. It's not the whole answer, but that's definitely a step in the right direction, and I'm puzzled as to why they haven't done that.'
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According to the DNR, it's not that simple: 'We do have the ability to pump water into the lake, but I think it's important to understand a couple of things. That water that we would pump with that supplemental supply comes from the ground, and it's a groundwater issue we're having right now,' stated Wallace.
There really is only one safe solution to get the lake levels back up.
'We need a lot of rain. We need snowfall. We need a couple of big rains; we need successive rains. We need to get back on track with precipitation. Each year, we go through a drought, which we're going on about year five now, that groundwater table drops a little more,' said Wallace.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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