Minnesota lake · tribal assessment record
Emerald Lake
Part of the Upper/Lower Red Lake Watershed in Beltrami County on the Red Lake Reservation. Assessment decisions reported by Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, Minnesota to EPA under Clean Water Act sections 303(d) and 305(b), last assessed in the 2022 reporting cycle.
- 57
- Assessed acres
- Lake
- Water type
This waterbody in one line
Emerald Lake, a lake in Minnesota, is assessed as fully supporting its designated uses, with no impairment causes listed in the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians's most recent Integrated Report cycle (2022). By assessed acreage it sits above the national median by assessed acreage (38,628 lakes); its impairment list is shorter than on half of assessed lakes (0 listed causes). Aquatic life is assessed as fully supporting.
- Fully Supporting
- overall status
- P58
- Assessed size nationally
- P51
- Shorter cause list
- Fully Supporting
- aquatic life
Assessment verdicts are the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians'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.
Where Emerald Lake 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: cause-list length
The standout filed fact is a short cause list: 0 causes, shorter than 51% of assessed lake-type units. A short list can mean a focused impairment, or a shallow assessment.
Every ruled-on use is fully supporting
The filed use determinations for 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.
Overall status: fully supporting
Overall status is Fully Supporting. If an IR category or cause row still appears, it usually reflects a prior listing path or a use the overall rollup does not collapse, read those sections rather than stopping at the tile.
Mid-pack assessed size
57.4 acres lands in the middle tercile of units with an area filed. Acreage is not what distinguishes this record from its peers.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ATTAINS program, Minnesota carries 13,176 filed lake-type waterbodies in the August 2026 extract, and this page renders the assessment record EPA assigned to Emerald 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 Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians's definitive verdicts; other entries mean the use was not conclusively assessed in this cycle.
| Designated use | Group | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| General | Other | Fully Supporting |
| Warm Water Fisheries | Aquatic-life or related | Fully Supporting |
| Secondary Contact | Recreation | Insufficient Information |
The record
Listed impairment causes
The Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians's reported assessment lists no impairment causes for this lake.
Reading the record
Where Emerald Lake sits among peers
20% of Minnesota's lakes assessed this deeply were also judged fully supported
The Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians ruled definitively on 2 designated uses at Emerald Lake and found every one of them supported. The dataset shows 854 Minnesota lakes judged to that same depth.
Minnesota's assessed lakes are most often judged on 1 use; 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 | 1.4k | 169 (this record) | 7 | 1 | 16 |
| Mixed | Not possible | 526 | 341 | 17 | 10 |
| None supported | 682 | 159 | 62 | 0 | 0 |
Ringed cell: Emerald Lake. Source: EPA ATTAINS, Reporting cycles 1987–2026.
Scale and rank
Emerald Lake is one of 13,176 lake-type waterbodies reported to EPA from Minnesota. It is not among the 1,939 whose reported record carries enough populated assessment or gauge data for this site to list and index it. At 57 assessed acres it ranks 16,300th 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 16,299 lakes with a larger one.
What this record holds
The Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians 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. The Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians 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.
In context
Where Emerald 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
57 Top 42% larger than 58% 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 Emerald Lake. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share.
In context
Minnesota context
ATTAINS carries 13,176 lake-type waterbodies in Minnesota, 1,798 assessed as not supporting at least one use and 1,566 fully supporting.
| Other large assessed lakes in Minnesota | Assessed acres |
|---|---|
| Superior Not Supporting | 13,182,720 |
| Lake of the Woods Not Supporting | 301,348 |
| Red (Lower Red) Not reported | 164,699 |
| Lower Red Lake Fully Supporting | 164,689 |
| Mille Lacs Not Supporting | 128,076 |
| Red (Upper Red) Not Supporting | 119,279 |
Peers near Emerald Lake's size or cause load
Similar assessed acres
Nearest filed extents (57 acres here).
- Coan Pond · 57 acres · NY
- Willys (Horseshoe) Lake, more · 57 acres · NY
- Wiley Lake · 57 acres · WI
- Popple Lake · 57 acres · WI
Similar cause load
Nearest listed-cause counts (0 here). Peers already in the acreage column are omitted.
- 31st Street Harbor · 0 causes · IL
- 59th Street Harbor · 0 causes · IL
- 657 Dunleavy (Beach) · 0 causes · MI
- <Null> · 0 causes · OR
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 Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians's reported decisions for assessment unit RLN_EMER. 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.