Maine lake · state assessment record

Aroostook River (4) at Mouth in Canada (1,948 acres)

Assessment decisions reported by Maine to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2002 reporting cycle.

1,948
Assessed acres
Lake, Freshwater
Water type
View watchlist

This waterbody in one line

Aroostook River (4) at Mouth in Canada, a lake in Maine, is assessed as fully supporting its designated uses, with no impairment causes listed in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2002). By assessed acreage it sits among the largest 5% by assessed acreage nationally (38,628 lakes); its impairment list is shorter than on half of assessed lakes (0 listed causes). Fish consumption is assessed as fully supporting.

Fully Supporting
overall status
P96
Assessed size nationally
P51
Shorter cause list
Fully Supporting
fish consumption

Assessment verdicts are the state agency's decisions as reported to EPA ATTAINS; PlainLakes renders them without modification.

A-
Water Quality Standing
81/100
Aroostook River (4) at Mouth in Canada

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.

RecreationA+
Meeting criteria
Swimming, boating, and other primary/secondary contact recreation
Drinking WaterA+
Meeting criteria
Suitability as a public drinking-water source
Aquatic LifeN/A
Not assessed
Support for fish, invertebrates, and other aquatic organisms
Fish ConsumptionA+
Meeting criteria
Safety of eating fish caught in this water
Impairment BurdenA+
0 causes
Filed pollutant/stressor causes on this record
Assessment CurrencyF
2002
Reporting cycle this record’s verdicts were last decided in

Reading Aroostook River (4) at Mouth in Canada's filed record

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: cause-list length

The standout filed fact is a short cause list: 0 causes, shorter than 51% of assessed lake-type units. A short list can mean a focused impairment, or a shallow assessment.

Large assessed unit

At 1,948 acres, Aroostook River (4) at Mouth in Canada clears the upper tercile of assessed lake-type units with an area on file (1,396 still larger). Size comparisons use the portal's deduplicated lake ranking population, not raw ATTAINS row counts.

Every filed use clears the bar

The filed use determinations for fish consumption, recreation are all Fully Supporting. Where an overall IR category still flags the unit, look at the cause list and report standing rather than treating the use row as empty.

IR category in the supporting band

EPA's Integrated Report category for Aroostook River (4) at Mouth in Canada is 2. In ATTAINS that band means the assessed uses are supporting (or supporting with other waters in the unit), so the narrative weight shifts to how deep the assessment went and whether monitoring is current, not to a restoration plan.

Overall status: fully supporting

Overall status is Fully Supporting. If an IR category or cause row still appears, it usually reflects a prior listing path or a use the overall rollup does not collapse, read those sections rather than stopping at the tile.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, Maine carries 339 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Aroostook River (4) at Mouth in Canada without modification. See our methodology for reporting-unit limits and gauge linking rules.

Reporting cycle
2002
Maine Integrated Report
Listing category
Category 2
Uses with verdicts
9
Definitive use assessments
Sources retrieved
2026-08-17
Portal-wide ATTAINS + NWIS pull

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. Maine filed its own confidence on the 9 definitive verdicts it rated: Good. That rating is the filer's, in EPA's own field, and EPA publishes no definition of the four words it offers.

Designated use Group Verdict
Agricultural Supply Other Fully Supporting
Filer confidence: Good
Drinking Water Supply After Disinfection Drinking-water supply designation Fully Supporting
Filer confidence: Good
Fish Consumption Fish-consumption or fishery Fully Supporting
Filer confidence: Good
Fishing Fish-consumption or fishery Fully Supporting
Filer confidence: Good
Hydroelectric Power Generation Other Fully Supporting
Filer confidence: Good
Industrial Process and Cooling Water Supply Other Fully Supporting
Filer confidence: Good
Navigation Other Fully Supporting
Filer confidence: Good
Primary Contact Recreation Recreation Fully Supporting
Filer confidence: Good
Secondary Contact Recreation Recreation Fully Supporting
Filer confidence: Good
Fish and Other Aquatic Life Aquatic-life or related Insufficient Information
Filer confidence: Good

The record

Listed impairment causes

The state's reported assessment lists no impairment causes for this lake.

Reading the record

Aroostook River (4) at Mouth in Canada: Category 2 reading

2 Category 2: some uses supported, others not assessed

Maine filed this assessment unit as Category 2: some designated uses are supported and others were not assessed in this cycle. Absence of a failing verdict is not the same as a full Category 1 finding.

How these categories work.

Scale and rank

Aroostook River (4) at Mouth in Canada is one of 339 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Maine, and one of 302 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 1,948 assessed acres it ranks 1,397th 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 1,396 lakes with a larger one.

What this record holds

Maine completed an assessment here and listed no impairment cause, so the record holds a verdict and its supporting use rows but no pollutant to track over time. The state has not yet filed a definitive aquatic-life verdict for this record; that field populates when it reports it in a future Integrated Report cycle.

In context

Where Aroostook River (4) at Mouth in Canada 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

1,948 Top 4% larger than 96% 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

0 Among the shortest cause lists fewer listed causes than 51% 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 Aroostook River (4) at Mouth in Canada. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.

In context

Maine context

ATTAINS carries 339 lake-type waterbodies in Maine, 31 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 272 fully supporting. Among the 302 indexed units there, Aroostook River (4) at Mouth in Canada ranks 133rd by listed-cause count (no listed causes) and 114th by assessed size among the 302 with an area filed; it is one of the 272 fully-supporting indexed records in the state .

Other large assessed lakes in Maine Assessed acres
Moosehead Lake Fully Supporting 79,454
Sebago Lake Fully Supporting 45,624
Spednick Lake Fully Supporting 35,904
Chesuncook Lake Fully Supporting 34,926
Mooselookmeguntic Lake Fully Supporting 32,243
West Grand Lake Fully Supporting 31,174

Peers near Aroostook River (4) at Mouth in Canada's size or cause load

Similar assessed acres

Nearest filed extents (1,948 acres here).

Similar cause load

Nearest listed-cause counts (0 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.

How peers are picked

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 ME0101000413_01L. 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.