Oklahoma lake · state assessment record
Elk City Lake
Assessment decisions reported by Oklahoma to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2018 reporting cycle.
- 240
- Assessed acres
- Lake, Freshwater
- Water type
- Eutrophic
- Reported trophic class
This waterbody in one line
Elk City Lake, a lake in Oklahoma, is assessed as fully supporting its designated uses, with no impairment causes listed in the state's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2018). By assessed acreage it sits in the upper quartile by assessed acreage nationally (38,628 lakes); its impairment list is shorter than on half of assessed lakes (0 listed causes). Aquatic life is assessed as fully supporting. Fish consumption is assessed as fully supporting.
- Fully Supporting
- overall status
- P84
- Assessed size nationally
- P51
- Shorter cause list
- Fully 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 Elk City 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: monitoring lag
The signature tension is currency: the reporting cycle is 2018 while monitoring evidence runs through 2006, a 12-year gap. Cycle year and last-monitored year move independently in ATTAINS; this page shows both.
Shorter than most cause lists
Only 0 causes on file, shorter than 51% of assessed lake-type units. Pair the short list with the use matrix: a single Not Supporting use can still be the whole story.
All ruled-on uses pass
The filed use determinations for fish consumption, recreation, aquatic life 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.
Large assessed unit
At 240 acres, Elk City Lake clears the upper tercile of assessed lake-type units with an area on file (6,294 still larger). Size comparisons use the portal's deduplicated lake ranking population, not raw ATTAINS row counts.
IR category in the supporting band
EPA's Integrated Report category for Elk City Lake 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.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, Oklahoma carries 456 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Elk City 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. Oklahoma filed 2006 as the year this waterbody was last monitored. Oklahoma filed its own confidence on the 4 definitive verdicts it rated: Good and Excellent. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Agriculture | Other | Fully Supporting Filer confidence: Excellent |
| Fish Consumption | Fish-consumption or fishery | Fully Supporting Filer confidence: Excellent |
| Fish and Wildlife Propagation-Warm Water Aquatic Community Subcategory | Aquatic-life or related | Fully Supporting Filer confidence: Good on biological; Excellent on physical/chemical |
| Primary Body Contact Recreation | Recreation | Fully Supporting Filer confidence: Good on physical/chemical; Excellent on pathogen indicators |
| Aesthetic | Other | Insufficient Information Filer confidence: Good on other public health indicators; Excellent on physical/chemical |
The record
Listed impairment causes
The state's reported assessment lists no impairment causes for this lake.
Reading the record
Elk City Lake: Category 2 reading
2 Category 2: some uses supported, others not assessed
Oklahoma 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.
Scale and rank
Elk City Lake is one of 456 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Oklahoma, and one of 173 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 240 assessed acres it ranks 6,295th 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 6,294 lakes with a larger one.
What this record holds
Oklahoma 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.
Reported trophic class
Eutrophic is the trophic class the filing agency reported to EPA ATTAINS for this assessment unit. It describes nutrient enrichment, not whether the water is safe, and it is not a PlainLakes inference. What the trophic scale measures.
Why no water-level record
Elk City Lake 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 Elk City 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
240 Top 16% larger than 84% 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 Elk City Lake. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
Oklahoma context
ATTAINS carries 456 lake-type waterbodies in Oklahoma, 153 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 45 fully supporting. Among the 173 indexed units there, Elk City Lake ranks 162nd by listed-cause count (no listed causes) and 121st by assessed size among the 170 with an area filed; it is one of the 45 fully-supporting indexed records in the state .
| Other large assessed lakes in Oklahoma | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Grand Lake Site 12 Not Supporting | 46,500 |
| Grand Lake Site 13 Not Supporting | 46,500 |
| Grand Lake Site 14 Fully Supporting | 46,500 |
| Grand Lake Site 15 Fully Supporting | 46,500 |
| Robert S. Kerr Lake Not Supporting | 43,380 |
| Texoma Lake, Red River Arm, Lower Not Supporting | 31,081 |
Peers near Elk City Lake's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (240 acres here).
- Beluga Lake (Homer) · 240 acres · AK
- Kenoza Lake · 240 acres · MA
- Mare Meadow Reservoir · 240 acres · MA
- Otis Creek Lake (Eureka) · 240 acres · KS
Similar cause load
Nearest listed-cause counts (0 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.
- 31st Street Harbor · 0 causes · IL
- 42nd Avenue East Beach · 0 causes · MN
- 59th Street Harbor · 0 causes · IL
- 657 Dunleavy (Beach) · 0 causes · MI
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 OK311500030120_00. 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.