New Jersey multi-water assessment unit · state assessment record

Dividing Creek (below Mill Creek)

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

1.36
Acres of lake water
Lake
Water type
View watchlist

This waterbody in one line

Dividing Creek (below Mill Creek), a multi-water assessment unit in New Jersey, is assessed as not supporting one or more designated uses, with 3 listed impairment causes 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 (3 listed causes vs 23,610 assessed lakes). Aquatic life is assessed as not supporting. Fish consumption is assessed as not supporting.

Not Supporting
overall status
P4
Assessed size nationally
P5
Shorter cause list
Not Supporting
aquatic life

The state agency files this as one assessment unit spanning 1.36 acres of lake water and 96.49 miles of stream and river. The verdicts and listed causes below are reported for the whole unit, not for the lake water alone. Assessment verdicts are the state agency's decisions as reported to EPA ATTAINS; PlainLakes renders them without modification.

F
Water Quality Standing
20/100
Dividing Creek (below Mill Creek)

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.

RecreationN/A
Not assessed
Swimming, boating, and other primary/secondary contact recreation
Drinking WaterN/A
Not assessed
Suitability as a public drinking-water source
Aquatic LifeF
Not supporting
Support for fish, invertebrates, and other aquatic organisms
Fish ConsumptionF
Not supporting
Safety of eating fish caught in this water
Impairment BurdenF
3 causes
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

Dividing Creek (below Mill Creek) against the ATTAINS 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: assessed size

What stands out first is how small the assessed unit is: 1.4 acres, smaller than 96% of the 38,628 lake-type units carrying an area.

Every filed use falls short

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

Longer than most cause lists

3 listed causes puts this unit above 90% 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.

Dividing Creek (below Mill Creek): Category 5, TMDL still owed

Category 5 is the Integrated Report band where a TMDL (or equivalent) is still expected for Dividing Creek (below Mill Creek). 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 Dividing Creek (below Mill Creek) 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, New Jersey carries 611 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Dividing Creek (below Mill Creek) without modification. See our methodology for reporting-unit limits and gauge linking rules.

Reporting cycle
2022
New Jersey Integrated Report
Listing category
Category 5
Uses with verdicts
3
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
Aquatic Life Aquatic-life or related Not Supporting
Fish Consumption Fish-consumption or fishery Not Supporting
Shellfish Harvesting Fish-consumption or fishery Not Supporting
Aquatic Life - Trout Aquatic-life or related Not Assessed
Primary Contact Recreation Recreation Insufficient Information
Public Water Supply Drinking-water supply designation Not Assessed
Secondary Contact Recreation Recreation Not Assessed

The record

Listed impairment causes

Causes the state listed as impairing designated uses of this multi-water assessment unit, 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 2006 TMDL priority: Medium
PCBs in Fish Tissue Fish Consumption 2006 TMDL priority: Low
Fecal Coliform Shellfish Harvesting 2014 TMDL priority: Medium

Reading the record

What this co-filed unit covers

96.49 miles of stream and river co-filed on this unit

The state agency files this as one assessment unit spanning 1.36 acres of lake water and 96.49 miles of stream and river. The verdicts and listed causes below are reported for the whole unit, not for the lake water alone.

This page is about the lake water in the unit; counts and verdicts below cover the whole multi-water assessment unit. How multi-water units are filed.

Scale and rank

Dividing Creek (below Mill Creek) is one of 611 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from New Jersey, and one of 588 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 1.36 assessed acres it ranks 37,122nd 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 37,121 lakes with a larger one.

Not yet on record

The state has not yet filed a definitive recreation verdict for this record; that field populates when it reports it in a future Integrated Report cycle.

In context

Where Dividing Creek (below Mill Creek) 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 Top 96% larger than 4% 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

3 Longer than most more listed causes than 90% 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 Dividing Creek (below Mill Creek). Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.

In context

New Jersey context

ATTAINS carries 611 lake-type waterbodies in New Jersey, 583 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 21 fully supporting. Among the 588 indexed units there, Dividing Creek (below Mill Creek) ranks 358th by listed-cause count (3 listed causes) and 543rd by assessed size among the 588 with an area filed; it sits in the not-supporting set (583 statewide) . Its listed causes (Dissolved Oxygen, PCBs in Fish Tissue, and Fecal Coliform) sit outside New Jersey's top-five list, which is led by Arsenic.

Other large assessed lakes in New Jersey Assessed acres
Wanaque Reservior (below Monks gage) Not Supporting 2,599
Lake Hopatcong Not Supporting 2,583
Prescott Brook / Round Valley Reservior Not Supporting 2,297
Merrill Creek Not Supporting 1,298
Wallkill R / Lake Mohawk(above Sparta Sta) Not Supporting 975
Wanaque R/Greenwood Lk(aboveMonks gage) Not Supporting 881

Peers near Dividing Creek (below Mill Creek)'s size or cause load

Similar assessed acres

Nearest filed extents (1.36 acres here).

Similar cause load

Nearest listed-cause counts (3 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.

How peers are picked

What to do with this record

  • The fish-consumption use is assessed as not supporting. Before eating fish from this multi-water assessment unit, check your state fish-advisory program for species-specific meal limits. 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 NJ02040206110060-01. 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.