Virginia reservoir · state assessment record
Bear Creek Lake
Assessment decisions reported by Virginia to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2026 reporting cycle, a cycle that is open for public comment.
- 41
- Assessed acres
- Reservoir
- Water type
This waterbody in one line
Bear Creek Lake, a reservoir in Virginia, is assessed as not supporting one or more designated uses, with one listed impairment cause in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2026), a cycle that is open for public comment. By assessed acreage it sits above the national median by assessed acreage (38,628 lakes); its impairment list is among the longest nationally (one listed cause vs 23,610 assessed lakes). Aquatic life is assessed as not supporting.
- Not Supporting
- overall status
- P50
- Assessed size nationally
- P20
- 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 Bear Creek 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: in-state cause rank
Inside Virginia, this unit sits toward the short-list end: cause-list rank 166 of 193 indexed units.
No ruled-on use clears the bar
On the uses this filer ruled on, aquatic life, every determination is Not Supporting. That is a use-by-use reading of the filed record, not a single overall lake grade.
Bear Creek Lake: Category 5, TMDL still owed
Category 5 is the Integrated Report band where a TMDL (or equivalent) is still expected for Bear Creek Lake. Read the listed causes and any cleanup actions filed beside them before treating the overall status tile as a finished restoration story.
Overall status: not supporting
The filer's overall status for Bear Creek Lake is Not Supporting. That tile summarizes the assessment unit; the designated-use rows and cause list are the evidence behind it.
Small within Virginia
State size rank 165 of 193 puts Bear Creek Lake toward the small end of Virginia's indexed lake-type units with an area.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, Virginia carries 275 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Bear Creek 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. Virginia filed its own confidence on the 2 definitive verdicts it rated: Low and 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Aquatic Life | Aquatic-life or related | Not Supporting Filer confidence: Low |
| Wildlife | Other | Fully Supporting Filer confidence: Good |
| Fish Consumption | Fish-consumption or fishery | Not Assessed |
| Recreation | Recreation | Insufficient Information Filer confidence: Fair |
The record
Listed impairment causes
Causes the state listed as impairing designated uses of this reservoir, 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 | 2022 | TMDL priority: Low |
Probable sources named by the state
Each source below is listed under the cause the state filed it against, and carries the word the state filed with it — confirmed, or suspected.
- Dissolved Oxygen
- Dam or Impoundment (suspected)
Reading the record
Where Bear Creek Lake sits among peers
44% of Virginia's lakes assessed this deeply also came out mixed
Virginia ruled definitively on 2 designated uses at Bear Creek Lake and found 1 of 2 not supported. The dataset shows 32 Virginia lakes judged to that same depth.
Virginia's assessed lakes are most often judged on 3 uses; this one was judged on 2.
Computed share from EPA ATTAINS filed records, not an official EPA rating or safety grade.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5+ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All supported | 7 | 15 | 26 | 2 | 0 |
| Mixed | Not possible | 14 (this record) | 66 | 48 | 4 |
| None supported | 45 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Ringed cell: Bear Creek Lake. Source: EPA ATTAINS, Reporting cycles 1987–2026.
Scale and rank
Bear Creek Lake is one of 275 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Virginia, and one of 193 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 41 assessed acres it ranks 19,307th 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 19,306 lakes with a larger one.
Still unfiled
The state has not yet filed a definitive fish-consumption verdict and a definitive recreation verdict for this record; those fields populate when it reports them in a future Integrated Report cycle.
Reported trophic class
Virginia carried the trophic field for this assessment unit and filed it as unclassified, which records that no class was determined rather than that the water is unenriched. What the trophic scale measures.
In context
Where Bear Creek 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
41 Top 50% larger than 50% 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
1 Longer than most more listed causes than 49% 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 Bear Creek Lake. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
Virginia context
ATTAINS carries 275 lake-type waterbodies in Virginia, 181 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 50 fully supporting. Among the 193 indexed units there, Bear Creek Lake ranks 166th by listed-cause count (one listed cause) and 165th by assessed size among the 193 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (181 statewide) . Its listed causes include Dissolved Oxygen, which also appears among Virginia's most-filed impairment causes (led by PCBs in Fish Tissue).
| Other large assessed lakes in Virginia | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Kerr Reservoir Assessment unit VAW-L75L_ROA05M22 Not Supporting | 14,828 |
| Kerr Reservoir Assessment unit VAW-L75L_ROA05L98 Not Supporting | 7,018 |
| Kerr Reservoir Assessment unit VAW-L75L_ROA05N22 Not Supporting | 4,182 |
| Lake Drummond Not Supporting | 3,242 |
| Lake Chesdin Not Supporting | 3,164 |
| Lake Gaston Not Supporting | 3,072 |
Peers near Bear Creek Lake's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (41 acres here).
- Tipton Reservoir-02050302000830 · 41 acres · PA
- Mule · 41 acres · MN
- Bunny · 41 acres · MN
- Wolf Pond · 41 acres · NY
Similar cause load
Nearest listed-cause counts (1 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.
- Aaron · 1 causes · MN
- Aaron River Reservoir · 1 causes · MA
- Abbotts Creek (including Lexington-Thomasville Water Supply Reservoir at normal reservoir elevation, Tom-A-Lex Lake) · 1 causes · NC
- Abeniki Lake · 1 causes · NH
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 VAP-H36L_BRC01A06. 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.