Editorial & Corrections Policy

How Pages Are Produced

PlainLakes' data pages are generated from official public datasets. The source records are downloaded directly from the publishers, EPA ATTAINS for state Integrated Report assessment decisions under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), and USGS NWIS for daily lake and reservoir water-level observations. They are loaded into a structured database, and every page is rendered from that database. The verdicts and figures you see, assessment statuses, use-support decisions, impairment causes, water-surface elevations, and dates, come directly from the published records; they are not hand-typed and not estimated here.

This is a data-publishing model: pages are produced programmatically from official government records so that every reported waterbody is covered consistently. The editorial work goes into the pipeline, how records are sourced, matched to named lakes, normalized, and presented, into the methodology, and into the written guides.

Sourcing Standards

• Primary sources only. Every verdict and reading comes from EPA ATTAINS or USGS NWIS, never from third-party aggregators.
• Attribution in context. Pages name the source, link to it where applicable, and show the reporting cycle or observation date the data reflects.
• Regulatory language is preserved. Assessment categories such as Fully Supporting and Not Supporting are the reporting government's own findings. PlainLakes does not rescore, reweight, or reclassify any of those decisions, and it computes no water-quality score of its own.
• Decisions are attributed to the government that made them. ATTAINS is not a state-only register: sovereign tribal nations with Clean Water Act section 518 authority assess waters under their jurisdiction and file their own Integrated Reports. Every page names the government that filed the record it shows, resolved from EPA's own classification of the reporting organization rather than from the state the water sits in. The methodology page explains the arrangement and gives the current counts.
• No invented data. Where a field is unavailable for a waterbody, the page says the data is not available rather than filling the gap with an estimate. An unassessed lake is presented as unassessed, never as clean or polluted.
• Honest freshness. Water-level readings are daily-batch snapshots of the trailing 365 days, never real-time, and pages say so. Dates shown are the dates in the source records, never auto-generated.

Update Cadence

The two sources move on different clocks. States report assessment decisions to EPA on cycles that are typically every 2 years, and some states lag behind that schedule, so there can be a gap between conditions in a lake and the verdict on record. USGS water-level observations are refreshed in daily batches. PlainLakes refreshes its database as the sources publish updates, so there can be a lag between an official release and its appearance here. Historical records remain in the database for reference, and the data-vintage date is shown on the relevant pages.

Corrections Process

If a record on PlainLakes looks wrong, please tell us. Because the pages are generated from the source datasets, a genuine error almost always traces back to either the source data or the processing of it, so this is how a report is handled:

1. Report. Email corrections@plainlakes.com or use the contact page with the lake page URL, the specific value that looks off, and, if you have it, the official source you are comparing against.
2. Verify. The record is compared against the published ATTAINS or NWIS source.
3. Fix at the source. If the value is wrong on this side, it is corrected in the database and pipeline that generate the page, not just on the single page, so every affected page is fixed at once. If the record faithfully reflects the published data, we explain that and point to the primary source; a disagreement with an assessment decision itself belongs with the government that made it, which is the one named on the page and is not always the state the lake sits in.
4. Note it. Material corrections are reflected the next time the page rebuilds and recorded on the public data changelog, so a change is auditable rather than silent.

We aim to acknowledge data-error reports within a few business days.

Editorial Independence

PlainLakes is an independent publisher and is not affiliated with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Geological Survey, or any state or tribal government whose decisions appear here. PlainLakes does not accept payment, sponsorship, or promoted placement from any covered entity, agency, or business connected to the waterbodies it covers. Our only revenue is contextual display advertising served by Google AdSense; advertisers do not influence which waterbodies are covered or how the data is presented.

Appropriate Use

PlainLakes is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, medical, or other professional advice. Assessment records can lag conditions in the water, and details can change after a record is ingested. In particular, a fish-consumption use status is a starting point, not consumption guidance: consult your state fish advisory program for species-specific limits and separate limits for children and pregnant women before eating fish from any lake. For swimming and recreation decisions, follow current advisories and posted closures from local health authorities, and confirm any important fact with the primary source.