California lake · state assessment record

Del Rey Lagoon

Assessment decisions reported by California to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2022 reporting cycle.

7.01
Assessed acres
Lake, Saline
Water type
View watchlist

This waterbody in one line

Del Rey Lagoon, a lake in California, is assessed as not supporting one or more designated uses, with one listed impairment cause in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2022). By assessed acreage it sits among the smaller assessed lakes nationally (38,628 lakes with a filed area); its impairment list is among the longest nationally (one listed cause vs 23,610 assessed lakes).

Not Supporting
overall status
P15
Assessed size nationally
P20
Shorter cause list

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

C-
Water Quality Standing
50/100
Del Rey Lagoon

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.

RecreationF
Not supporting
Swimming, boating, and other primary/secondary contact recreation
Drinking WaterN/A
Not assessed
Suitability as a public drinking-water source
Aquatic LifeN/A
Not assessed
Support for fish, invertebrates, and other aquatic organisms
Fish ConsumptionN/A
Not assessed
Safety of eating fish caught in this water
Impairment BurdenA+
1 cause
Filed pollutant/stressor causes, vs. the national corpus of assessed active units
Assessment CurrencyB+
2022
Reporting cycle this record’s verdicts were last decided in

Where Del Rey Lagoon stands in 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 California, this unit sits toward the short-list end: cause-list rank 189 of 195 indexed units.

Every filed use falls short

On the uses this filer ruled on, recreation, every determination is Not Supporting. That is a use-by-use reading of the filed record, not a single overall lake grade.

Del Rey Lagoon: Category 4A reading

Category 4A means a TMDL (or equivalent) is already approved for the impairment on Del Rey Lagoon. The remaining work is implementation and tracking, read the cleanup-standing and cause rows for what the state already committed to address.

Small assessed unit

7 acres puts Del Rey Lagoon in the lower tercile by assessed area. Small units are often beaches, ponds, or segments, read the water-type and co-filed notes before comparing them to a multi-thousand-acre reservoir.

Small within California

State size rank 191 of 195 puts Del Rey Lagoon toward the small end of California's indexed lake-type units with an area.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, California carries 607 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Del Rey Lagoon without modification. See our methodology for reporting-unit limits and gauge linking rules.

Reporting cycle
2022
California Integrated Report
Listing category
Category 4A
Uses with verdicts
1
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.

Designated use Group Verdict
Water Contact Recreation Recreation Not Supporting

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
Pathogens Water Contact Recreation 2024 TMDL approved

Probable sources

California listed the source of the impairment as unknown. That is the state's own filed value, not a gap in this record: the cause has been identified, the origin has not.

Reading the record

Del Rey Lagoon: Category 4A reading

4A Category 4A: impaired, TMDL completed

California 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.

How listing and cleanup work.

Scale and rank

Del Rey Lagoon is one of 607 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from California, and one of 195 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 7.01 assessed acres it ranks 33,076th 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 33,075 lakes with a larger one.

Awaiting a filing

The state has not yet filed a definitive fish-consumption verdict and a definitive aquatic-life verdict for this record; those fields populate when it reports them in a future Integrated Report cycle.

In context

Where Del Rey Lagoon 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

7 Top 85% larger than 15% 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 Del Rey Lagoon. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.

In context

California context

ATTAINS carries 607 lake-type waterbodies in California, 202 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 22 fully supporting. Among the 195 indexed units there, Del Rey Lagoon ranks 189th by listed-cause count (one listed cause) and 191st by assessed size among the 195 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (202 statewide) . Its listed causes (Pathogens) sit outside California's top-five list, which is led by Mercury.

Other large assessed lakes in California Assessed acres
Salton Sea Not Supporting 233,045
Tahoe, Lake Not Supporting 84,092
Goose Lake (Modoc County) Not reported 62,385
Honey Lake Not Supporting 55,526
Klamath River HU, Tule Lake and Lower Klamath Lake National Wildlife Refuge Not Supporting 48,791
Mono Lake Not Supporting 45,299

Peers near Del Rey Lagoon's size or cause load

Similar assessed acres

Nearest filed extents (7.01 acres here).

Similar cause load

Nearest listed-cause counts (1 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 CAS4047000020210326048829. 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.