Colorado reservoir · state assessment record
Continental Reservoir.
Assessment decisions reported by Colorado to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2024 reporting cycle.
- 374
- Assessed acres
- Lake / Reservoir / Pond
- Water type
This waterbody in one line
Continental Reservoir., a reservoir in Colorado, is assessed as not supporting one or more designated uses, with one listed impairment cause in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2024). By assessed acreage it sits in the upper quartile by assessed acreage nationally (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
- P88
- 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.
Reading Continental Reservoir.'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: monitoring lag
The signature tension is currency: the reporting cycle is 2024 while monitoring evidence runs through 2016, a 8-year gap. Cycle year and last-monitored year move independently in ATTAINS; this page shows both.
A split ruling across uses
This record splits: Not Supporting on aquatic life, Fully Supporting on recreation. The divergence is inside the designated-use matrix, not a single all-or-nothing label.
Continental Reservoir.: Category 5, TMDL still owed
Category 5 is the Integrated Report band where a TMDL (or equivalent) is still expected for Continental Reservoir.. Read the listed causes and any cleanup actions filed beside them before treating the overall status tile as a finished restoration story.
Large assessed unit
At 374 acres, Continental Reservoir. clears the upper tercile of assessed lake-type units with an area on file (4,557 still larger). Size comparisons use the portal's deduplicated lake ranking population, not raw ATTAINS row counts.
Overall status: not supporting
The filer's overall status for Continental Reservoir. is Not Supporting. That tile summarizes the assessment unit; the designated-use rows and cause list are the evidence behind it.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, Colorado carries 344 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Continental Reservoir. 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. Colorado filed 2016 as the year this waterbody was last monitored.
| Designated use | Group | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Agriculture | Other | Fully Supporting |
| Aquatic Life Cold Water-Class 1 | Aquatic-life or related | Not Supporting |
| Recreation | Recreation | Fully Supporting |
| Water Supply | Drinking-water supply designation | Fully Supporting |
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 Cold Water-Class 1 | 2024 | TMDL priority: High |
Reading the record
How current is Continental Reservoir.'s evidence?
8 years between the 2024 reporting cycle and monitoring through 2016
Colorado filed 2016 as the year this waterbody was last monitored.
The cycle is when the state reported; the monitoring year, where filed, is when it measured. How to read assessment currency.
Scale and rank
Continental Reservoir. is one of 344 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Colorado, and one of 122 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 374 assessed acres it ranks 4,558th 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 4,557 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.
Why no water-level record
Continental Reservoir. has no daily USGS water-level or reservoir-storage series on this page because NWIS lists a lake monitoring site named for the waterbody, but the site is not active, and PlainLakes ingests only the active inventory, so there is no series to attach. How PlainLakes links gauges.
In context
Where Continental Reservoir. 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
374 Top 12% larger than 88% 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 Continental Reservoir.. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
Colorado context
ATTAINS carries 344 lake-type waterbodies in Colorado, 89 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 74 fully supporting. Among the 122 indexed units there, Continental Reservoir. ranks 67th by listed-cause count (one listed cause) and 52nd by assessed size among the 122 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (89 statewide) . Its listed causes include Dissolved Oxygen, which also appears among Colorado's most-filed impairment causes (led by Arsenic).
| Other large assessed lakes in Colorado | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| John Martin Reservoir. Not Supporting | 17,147 |
| Blue Mesa Reservoir Fully Supporting | 8,957 |
| Lake Granby. Not Supporting | 7,036 |
| Two Buttes Reservoir, Two Buttes Pond, Hasty Lake, Holbrook Reservoir, Burchfield Lake, Nee-Skah (Queens) Reservoir, Neeso Pah Reservoir, Nee Noshe Reservoir. Fully Supporting | 6,123 |
| Lake and reserviors tributary to the South Platte River Not Assessed | 5,770 |
| Lake Meredith. Not Supporting | 5,531 |
Peers near Continental Reservoir.'s size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (374 acres here).
- Swan Lake (Crescent Lake NWR) · 374 acres · NE
- Devils Lake · 374 acres · WI
- Canobie Lake · 374 acres · NH
- Upper Straits Lake · 374 acres · MI
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 CORGRG38_G. 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.