Minnesota lake · state assessment record
Amber
Assessment decisions reported by Minnesota to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2022 reporting cycle.
- 182
- Assessed acres
- Lake, Freshwater
- Water type
This waterbody in one line
Amber, a lake in Minnesota, is assessed as not supporting one or more designated uses, with 2 listed impairment causes in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2022). By assessed acreage it sits in the upper quartile by assessed acreage nationally (38,628 lakes); its impairment list is among the longest nationally (2 listed causes vs 23,610 assessed lakes). Aquatic life is assessed as not supporting.
- Not Supporting
- overall status
- P80
- 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 Amber 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: in-state cause rank
Inside Minnesota, cause-list rank is the local separator: Amber is 283 of 1,939 indexed units by listed-cause count, toward the top of that state's filed lists.
Every ruled-on use is not supporting
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.
Amber: Category 4A reading
Category 4A means a TMDL (or equivalent) is already approved for the impairment on Amber. The remaining work is implementation and tracking, read the cleanup-standing and cause rows for what the state already committed to address.
Large assessed unit
At 181.5 acres, Amber clears the upper tercile of assessed lake-type units with an area on file (7,795 still larger). Size comparisons use the portal's deduplicated lake ranking population, not raw ATTAINS row counts.
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.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, Minnesota carries 13,176 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Amber 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Aquatic Life | Aquatic-life or related | Not Supporting |
| Aquatic Recreation | Recreation | Not Supporting |
| Aquatic Consumption | Fish-consumption or fishery | Not Assessed |
| Drinking Water | Drinking-water supply designation | Insufficient Information |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nutrients | Aquatic Recreation | 2006 | TMDL approved |
| Fish Bioassessments | Aquatic Life | 2020 | TMDL approved |
Reading the record
Amber: Category 4A reading
4A Category 4A: impaired, TMDL completed
Minnesota 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
Amber is one of 13,176 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Minnesota, and one of 1,939 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 182 assessed acres it ranks 7,796th 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 7,795 lakes with a larger one.
Open in the register
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.
In context
Where Amber 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
182 Top 20% larger than 80% 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 Amber. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
Minnesota context
ATTAINS carries 13,176 lake-type waterbodies in Minnesota, 1,798 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 1,566 fully supporting. Among the 1,939 indexed units there, Amber ranks 283rd by listed-cause count (2 listed causes) and 1,174th by assessed size among the 1,930 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (1,798 statewide) . Its listed causes include Nutrients and Fish Bioassessments, which also appear among Minnesota's most-filed impairment causes (led by Mercury in Fish Tissue).
| Other large assessed lakes in Minnesota | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Superior Not Supporting | 13,182,720 |
| Lake of the Woods Not Supporting | 301,348 |
| Red (Lower Red) Not reported | 164,699 |
| Lower Red Lake Fully Supporting | 164,689 |
| Mille Lacs Not Supporting | 128,076 |
| Red (Upper Red) Not Supporting | 119,279 |
Peers near Amber's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (182 acres here).
- Lake Glenada · 182 acres · FL
- Lake Washington · 182 acres · WA
- Pixley Flowage · 182 acres · WI
- Lake Williams · 181 acres · ND
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
- 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 MN46-0034-00. 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.